How can I open an application when a secondary monitor is connected? I use SecondBar to add a menu bar to an external display. I've added it to my login items, but I don't want it to open when there isn't an external display. How do I open SecondBar when a secondary monitor is connected?

Take a look at the free/open source app ControlPlane.

You can trigger different actions based on context-sensitive rules, including launching an app in response to connecting a display.


Creating a bootable Linux distro compatible with Mac OS X I have downloaded the appropriate Linux distro (in this case Fedora Xfce Live) and I have partitioned the USB with Disk Utility and attempted copying both the Fedora iso, and a Fedora iso converted to the Mac .img format.

When I booted (holding option key) the USB with Fedora didn't show up in either case in boot manager.

What needs to be done for Mac to consider the USB "bootable" and for it to be visible in "boot manager" when holding option key?

A working approach to get Fedora Xfce Live booting is the dd-method:

Download Fedora 23 Xfce Desktop.
Attach the thumb drive. The thumb drive will be erased!
Open Terminal and enter diskutil list to get the disk identifier of the thumb drive (e.g. /dev/disk3).
Unmount the thumb drive with diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk3
Enter:

sudo dd if=/Users/user_name/Downloads/Fedora-Live-Xfce-x86_64-23-10.iso of=/dev/rdisk3 bs=8m

This will copy the content of the iso to the thumb drive. When the process is finished you get an response like this one:

114+1 records in
114+1 records out
960495616 bytes transferred in 5.920656 secs (162227899 bytes/sec)

Exit and close Terminal.
Open System Preferences -> Startup Volume and choose "Fedora Live" (or similar).
Reboot your Mac. You may need a USB keyboard/mouse because Bluetooth devices like the Apple Magic Mouse initially don't work booted to Fedora Live.


4SNS TCBC - Which Mac Pro sensor is that? Briefly my Mac Pro (4,1 Early 2009 ) stopped booting which I eventually traced to the plastic clip holding the north bridge down failing. Seems to be a common issue.

Replaced the clips and now it will boot again and is stable but refuses to run the 2nd CPU. Kernel boot messages show it's there but disabled.

Apple hardware test gives error of 4SNS/1/40000000: TCBC-252:000 which from various sites on the net I understand to mean

4SNS - Sensor
TCBC
|----- Temperature
 |---- CPU
  |--- CPU B ?
   |-- C ?`

Any idea on the numbers ?

Can anyone help me diagnose here, is it new Heatsink time or new Logic board time. Neither is great but a heatsink is much cheaper than a logic board.Is it something else that's fixable ?

Both CPUs verified good in socket A.
All RAM verified good in Socket A RAM slots.
No diagnostic LEDs lit.
New thermal paste everywhere
SMC reset
PRAM reset

EDIT: RAM Clarification
EDIT: Things done
Thanks

I rang Apple in the end, they didn't know either without seeing it. 8-)

Suggested I take it in for a free diagnosis.

Before I did that I tried taking the heatsink sensors connected off and replacing it.

Bingo, all fixed.

So the answer must be that this error is the heatsink sensor.


How to launch jar the same way Jar Launcher does The source of this problem is that Jar Launcher (/System/Library/CoreServices/Jar\ Launcher.app) runs the jar just perfectly (as far as I know, the Jar Launcher app is the one that runs jars which you double click in finder), but I need to set a memory buffer limits.

So I've tried to run the jar like:

java -Xms1024m -Xmx2048m -jar <path_to_jar>

And when I run a jar like this, I get an exception:

Exception in thread "Thread-11" java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: net.minecraft.Util.excutePost(Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/String;)Ljava/lang/String;

Do you have any idea what can be wrong with me launching app the way described above? Can you suggest any way to launch the jar like the Jar Launcher does or how to specify memory buffer limits for Jar Launcher?

EDIT

My console java version is:

java -version
java version "1.6.0_33"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_33-b03-424-11M3720)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.8-b03-424, mixed mode)

But I have no idea how to find out what version is Jar Launcher using

The problem is that you need to specify the class paths with the cp option to java and the library paths with the D option. The Minecraft launcher under /Applications handles this if you have a default install.  If you want to run the default configuration from the commandline, just run something like the following with the memory values of your choosing:

java -Xmx2048M -Xms512M -jar \
/Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/Resources/Java/MinecraftLauncher.jar

Here's an example of how I run Minecraft from the command-line for ad-hoc mode.  I put the following in a script, name it and run it by name:

MCHOME="$HOME/Library/Application Support/minecraft/bin"
CP="$MCHOME/minecraft.jar:$MCHOME/lwjgl.jar:$MCHOME/lwjgl_util.jar:$MCHOME/jinput.jar"

java -Xmx2048M -Xms512M -cp "$CP" \
    -Djava.library.path="$MCHOME/natives" \
    net.minecraft.client.Minecraft


Play and pause don't work properly with bluetooth headphones (Mac) I've been having a very annoying problem with my Beyerdynamic Amiron Wireless headphones for a couple of years now and I'm wondering if anyone else has had such issues. Say I'm listening to music through the Spotify desktop client and I pause the music there and go to watch a video on Youtube. I expect to hear the video from the headphones, but I won't, because somehow the headphones think there is no audio signal. Once I unpause Spotify, I can hear both the music and the browser but pausing the music will again mute the browser. The browser is in fact playing the content with audio and is not muted, but the headphones are somehow locked to Spotify. So the only solution would be to either kill Spotify, or set it to play but mute it so that I can only hear Youtube (which is what I usually do because opening and closing it is too sluggish). If I choose to close Spotify, sometimes the headphones still won't play anything until I pause/unpause from the second application.

This tends to happen with any pair of applications that both play audio and I'm not sure if it's an OS X bug or related to the headphone's firmware. The same does not happen with Apple's own AirPods but I don't have access to another non-Apple pair of wireless headphones to test. It also doesn't happen when connecting the same set of wireless headphones (or any other) through the 3.5mm jack or while using the speakers.

Has anyone experienced similar issues, with these particular model or another wireless headphone and if there is a fix?

Heyho i have the same problem with the same Headset.
I found this in a Spotify forum:
There is a fix everyone!
Just go to Edit -> preferences -< Display options and disable "Show desktop overlay when using media keys"
This fixed my issue atleast

For me it did not help...even worse... i'm more confused. After disable this Options the browser works, but the Ingam-Spund mutes.


Mail browser has 20+ viewer windows open but can't close them all, even with a force restart When I click show all viewer windows, they pop up on the bottom and allow me to pick one by one to close them. Is this my only option to close them all?

Command + Option + W closes all the Windows on the app.

One may also click on File menu at the top, and hold Option key to find the Close all option to close all windows.


Accessing files on external drive through USB I am using a MacBook Pro Late 2011. I lately took out the hard drive and replaced it with a new one. The old HDD still has OS X installed on it, so basically I did nothing before taking it out. Now I want to access some files on it, so I have a SATA to USB bridge. When I spin up the drive, I can find it in Disk Utility and with diskutil list, plus in the system report under the USB tab.

However, when I connect it, I get a message saying "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer". As a result, I cannot access it in the Finder. I thought that maybe I could boot from the disk because it has OS X installed and all, but the disk is not shown if I access "Startup Disk" in the system preferences. It does also not show if I do a reboot and hold down the option key.

Where should I go from here? Does anyone know how I can read the contents of the disk? It has never been used for anything else than OS X, as it has been in my Mac since I bought it. Ideally, if I could access the files from within my current installation of OS X, that would be perfect, but whatever works...

Any help is much appreciated!

EDIT: The hard drive is a Hitachi 5K750-500 (500GB). It is the standard one that the MacBook was delivered with. The SATA to USB adapter is an ICIDU AI-707944 ("Hard Disk IDE/SATA to USB 2.0 adapter").

This is as close as I can get to an answer.

It would appear the transfer rate for the bridge is 150 MBps (1.5 Gbps). This would indicate conformance to the SATA I standard. The drive has a transfer rate of 300 MBps (3 Gbps). This would indicate conformance to the SATA II standard. Even though the connectors appear to be the same, these two standards are incompatible.

Some drives have a jumper you can insert to force a SATA II drive to emulate the SATA I standard. The installation instructions for your drive do not indicate this to be true. You may want to examine the drive for possible jumpers or other instructions.

For other readers, I will mention that the SATA III standard of 600 MBps (6 Gbps) is compatible with the SATA II standard. The hardware will transfer data at the lesser of the two speeds.

It also does not help that I can not find a web site that states the bridge is Mac compatible. All sites only mention Windows compatibility.


My icloud account was hacked, I changed the password, what else should I do? This morning I woke up just to find several messages sent to a Chinese number in my imessage app. I also found an email in my mail by Apple saying that someone had log in with my credential on an iMac (I don't own that).

Apple did good and blocked my account and asked me to change my password and I did so. The questions I have now are the following:

Should I be worried? I have several password stored in my icloud keychain, are all of them compromised now? Should I change them all one by one? Are credit card details also compromised?

Yes, if they activated "Keychain" using another device you should change your passwords.

Keep in mind that activating "Keychain" in the iCloud preferences should require you to confirm the device using another device.

Please check to see how your account's authentication is currently set up (e.g. log out of your Apple ID on your Mac (iCloud), turn on iCloud using your Apple ID and try to activate "Keychain". Now your Mac should prompt you to activate Keychain using on of your other devices.


Spotlight does not index mail Spotlight does not deliver any result from mail messages (although searching inside Mail.app works)

I tried to re-index the mails with the following result:

$ mdimport -Vp -d 4 -r /System/Library/Spotlight/Mail.mdimporter
Total processing time spent in importer plug-ins: 0.000000 seconds for 0 files
Top 0 most expensive files for importer plug-ins:

What could be wrong?

You can go for a re-index of the whole drive. Check out this help page at Apple: Re-index folder or drive

Also looking in there might show that the mail folder has been hidden for privacy.


How do I add the wifi and bluetooth icon to the menubar programatically (from the command line)? We have a large number of computers to set up and would like to add the wifi and bluetooth icons to the menubar. How can I turn these settings on via a shell script or command line instruction?

I believe the Wi-Fi one is there by default, but if you want to be sure, you can use

open '/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Bluetooth.menu'

open '/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/AirPort.menu'

to add them to the menu bar.

(Note: those paths are valid from at least El Capitan to Catalina.)


Transfer Live Photos to another folder on Macbook I am able to upload Live Photos from my iPhone to Macbook. I am able to view the Live Photos within Photos.app. However, when I transfer a Live Photo from 'Photos Library.photoslibrary' to another location only a still .jpg is saved.

How can I transfer Live Photos to other locations on my Macbook - keeping them Live?

From Macworld.com:

  Option-drag an image into the Finder or select File > Export > Export
  Unmodified Original For [X] Photo(s) are both the unmodified JPEG and
  the associated MOV retrieved.

  You can also use the Image Capture app with an iPhone connected via
  USB, select the iPhone, choose Live Photos images, and then import
  them, and both the JPEG and MOV for each image are transferred.


Quicktime screen recording on Retina display On OS X 10.8 I'm trying to record screen using Quicktime. But for some reason the resulting video resolution is only 1280 by 800, even thought I'm on Retina display.

How can I record screen in Retina resolution?

Quicktime obeys the Displays preference pane like most other applications will.

The first step to increasing the resolution for recording will be to adjust the settings to have a larger equivalent screen size as I have done in this picture (and you can take things to even larger pixel counts by selecting More Space which in turn makes items like the menu bar physically smaller when rendered).

If that's not sufficient for your needs, you may need to select a tool like the Screeny app to record the "full" resolution.

In my case, I have the 13 inch MacBook Pro with Retina, so it will capture the screen at 2880x1800 no matter what setting you have on the Displays Preference when you choose "full screen" recording.

http://www.screenyapp.com


I have forgotten my iCloud username and password and need to turn Find My iPhone off. What can I do? I have forgotten my Apple iCloud username and password. I can't remember the email address I used to sign up for the account. I need to turn off Find My iPhone before sending my iPhone in for servicing. My screen won't turn on at all so I don't know what else to do. I am being told that if I don't turn Find My iPhone off I can't get my phone fixed.

Is there any way I can recover my account information and turn off Find My iPhone in this situation?

If you have Find My iPhone turned in, then you are signed into iCloud. Go to Settings > iCloud. At the top it will have a name and iCloud ID. Write down the icloud ID (it may be one of your non-apple email addresses) then click on that and it will ask for the for the password. If you cannot remember it, click the Forgot Apple ID or Password link in blue. Enter the iCloud ID you wrote down earlier, then click the Next button on the top right of the screen.

Continue to follow the onscreen instructions.


find: /dev/fd/3: Not a directory Running this command sudo find / -iname *.app, among the entries returned was:

find: /dev/fd/3: Not a directory
find: /dev/fd/4: Not a directory

Why is this and how can I fix it?

sudo find -x / -iname *.app

or

sudo find / -iname *.app 2>/dev/null

The first solution prevents find from descending into directories that have a device number different that that of the file from which the decent began. This prevents the errors from occurring, but limits the search to a single device.

The second solution does not stop the error messages from being generated. Instead, the message are just discarded so you do not see them. This solution discards not only the error messages you describe, but rather all error messages.


Mac chrome can't drag and scroll in bookmark folder I tried asking reddit and chrome forum but I think it's a Mac thing, something with scrolling, anyway I can't drag bookmarks up or down a folder on the bookmark bar, it gets stuck, from googling I found at least one person with a similar problem and lots of others with bookmark dragging problems.
Sometimes I want to rearrange on the fly, or add a seperator, bookmark manager is better, but less convenient for things like adding horizontal seperators, here's what it looks like

Don't really have any ideas, I won't reinstall my whole chrome profile for it, too many bookmarks and things in my profile, I don't want to risk corruption, but any other ideas I'll try before I give up on it.

This works by emulating the middle mouse, I did so using a preset in bettertouchtool for this function made by the dev
https://community.folivora.ai/t/emulate-a-real-middle-click-including-dragging-with-the-trackpad-e-g-for-cad-programs/1076
you kind of have to use both hands on the trackpad but it works once you figure it out, probably do-able with other programs too.


How to use home-brew g++ I try to make and get:

Makefile:81: "*** WARNING g++ minor version <7 ***"
mkdir -p obj_linux/codebase/spoa/src/
g++ -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++ -D__cplusplus=201103L -I"./src/" -I"/usr/include/" -Icodebase/argparser/src -Icodebase/seqlib/src -Icodebase/samscripts/src -Icodebase/spoa/src -O3 -fdata-sections ->ffunction-ections -c -fmessage-length=0 -ffreestanding -fopenmp -m64 ->std=c++11 -error=return-type -pthread -march=native -o obj_linux/codebase/spoa/src/alignment.o codebase/spoa/src/alignment.cpp
clang: error: unsupported option '-fopenmp'
make: *** [obj_linux/codebase/spoa/src/alignment.o] Error 1
lahmersk-iml13:racon lahmersk$ whereis g++
/usr/bin/g++

I have a home-brew install of 7.3 at /usr/local/Cellar/gcc

I tried to export PATH in .bash_profile with:

# gcc location
export PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/gcc:$PATH

My Cellar directory has:

lahmersk-iml13:Cellar lahmersk$ ls
aragorn     gdbm        libmpc      parallel    sqlite
barrnap     gmp     llvm        prodigal    tbl2asn
blast       hmmer       lmdb        prokka      xz
cmake       infernal    minced      python3
eigen       isl     mpfr        qt
gcc     libffi      openssl     readline

and gcc is:

lahmersk-iml13:Cellar lahmersk$ cd gcc
lahmersk-iml13:gcc lahmersk$ ls
7.3.0

My current bash_profile is:

# Homebrew location
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH

# Centrifuge location
export PATH=/Users/lahmersk/centrifuge:$PATH

# Spades location
export PATH=/Users/lahmersk/SPAdes-3.11.1-Darwin/bin:$PATH

# Bowtie2 location
export PATH=/Users/lahmersk/bowtie2-2.3.4.1:$PATH

# Pilon location
export PATH=/Users/lahmersk/pilon-1.21:$PATH

# Prokka location
export PATH=/Users/lahmersk/prokka/bin:$PATH

# Barrnap location
export PATH=/Users/lahmersk/barrnap/bin:$PATH

# gcc location
export PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/gcc:$PATH

when I do sudo vi /etc/paths I get:

/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin

I could use some assistance. What other info can I provide?

You shouldn't need to add the Cellar to your path for this. But Homebrew adds a version suffix to the gcc commands to avoid name clashes with the standard gcc:

pse@Mithos:~$ ssh verence@localhost brew install gcc
[...]
==> Downloading https://homebrew.bintray.com/bottles/gcc-7.3.0.high_sierra.bottle.1.tar.gz
==> Downloading from https://akamai.bintray.com/d0/d09669e3679bb54448f00cda4bf520e631f7487f132ebfe6e0d2f6ecdcd5f6e0?__gda__=exp=1519315844~hmac=df4f6f9b82a2ac5fb5465be3f9dc91c0c3eea0c254e894113edf5fcc2b640c57&response-content-disposition=attachment%3Bfilename%3D%22gcc-7.3.0.high_sierra.bottle.1.tar.gz%22&response-content-type=application%2Fgzip&requestInfo=U2FsdGVkX1-mCWpMqQTGrxnTfILcUZz-NvVoQyGOGSnI4iWY_Z2bJghjhAR-xgGu9cDwVXgE9DLumAnLcf1a5kZAz724Fowtbckow4p_nVq39TQR8WNf4jMP4z7Sql3NQ2dFr1pLXQ3paB2FUCf1_A&response-X-Checksum-Sha1=d492b86b3ba112920165af9df80dd793df1d8f46&response-X-Checksum-Sha2=d09669e3679bb54448f00cda4bf520e631f7487f132ebfe6e0d2f6ecdcd5f6e0
==> Pouring gcc-7.3.0.high_sierra.bottle.1.tar.gz
  /usr/local/Cellar/gcc/7.3.0: 1,486 files, 284.9MB

pse@Mithos:~$ ll /usr/local/bin/g*-7
lrwxr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  29 Feb 22 16:59 /usr/local/bin/g++-7@ -> ../Cellar/gcc/7.3.0/bin/g++-7
lrwxr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  29 Feb 22 16:59 /usr/local/bin/gcc-7@ -> ../Cellar/gcc/7.3.0/bin/gcc-7
lrwxr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  32 Feb 22 16:59 /usr/local/bin/gcc-ar-7@ -> ../Cellar/gcc/7.3.0/bin/gcc-ar-7
lrwxr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  32 Feb 22 16:59 /usr/local/bin/gcc-nm-7@ -> ../Cellar/gcc/7.3.0/bin/gcc-nm-7
lrwxr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  36 Feb 22 16:59 /usr/local/bin/gcc-ranlib-7@ -> ../Cellar/gcc/7.3.0/bin/gcc-ranlib-7
lrwxr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  30 Feb 22 16:59 /usr/local/bin/gcov-7@ -> ../Cellar/gcc/7.3.0/bin/gcov-7
lrwxr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  35 Feb 22 16:59 /usr/local/bin/gcov-dump-7@ -> ../Cellar/gcc/7.3.0/bin/gcov-dump-7
lrwxr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  35 Feb 22 16:59 /usr/local/bin/gcov-tool-7@ -> ../Cellar/gcc/7.3.0/bin/gcov-tool-7
lrwxr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  34 Feb 22 16:59 /usr/local/bin/gfortran-7@ -> ../Cellar/gcc/7.3.0/bin/gfortran-7

So the compiler you are looking for can be invoked with g++-7.


Download songs without password prompt When using Apple TV, it asks me every time I want to download a song for my password. It happens each time I download from Apple TV (not my iPhone).

Is there a way to make it download the song without prompting for my password?

On your Apple TV, go to Settings → Accounts → iTunes and App Store → Password Settings.
In the section labeled Purchases And In-App Purchases choose the Require Password option.
Now set your preferred level of protection to Never. You can also choose to be reminded to Always enter password for purchases or After 15 Minutes.
Also select Require Password under the Free Downloads section and choose Never to turn off password prompts when downloading free apps from the App Store.

I'm assuming you have a 4th-gen Apple TV.


Run Makefile from Finder I often travel using Finder in the source directories of various project (LaTeX articles, programming stuff) for which the compilation is piloted by a Makefile.
I was wondering if there is a simple way (Service menu, Automator whatever) to invoke the corresponding command (make) in the good directory directoly from Finder (right-click something).

I'm running OS X 10.8.

Thanks by advance for your suggestions

You could use a function like this:

fmake() {
  cd "$(osascript -e 'tell application "Finder"
      POSIX path of (target of Finder window 1 as alias)
  end tell' 2> /dev/null)"
  make && make install
}

Or save a function just for the cd command and use history-search-backward to run something like cdf && make && make install.

Or open Automator, choose the Service template, set the input type to no input, and add a Run AppleScript action like this:

try
    tell application "Finder"
        POSIX path of (target of Finder window 1 as alias)
    end tell
    tell application "Terminal"
        do script "cd " & quoted form of result & " && make && make install"
        activate
    end tell
end

Without the try block Automator would show an error dialog if the script exits with an error.


Password incorrect after enabling FileVault I use FileVault to encrypt all my disks. Lately I had problems restarting my MacBook. After restart, the keyboard and mouse froze at login, making it impossible to login or do anything. It appeared that the solution was to disable FileVault in recovery mode. After that I could login and it all seemed to work.

See MacBook startup problems - mouse and keyboard not working at login / stuck on apple logo

Not long after that I thought to enable Filevault again, and so I did. This was not a good idea. I enabled it, I saw a recovery code that I copied into my Keepass database on the Mac, and restarted. Right after that I got the same problem with frozen keyboard and mouse. So I tried to go back by disabling FileVault, except now my password didn't work anymore.

When I enabled FileVault, no password was asked, so I assumed it would use the same password as I use for login. It works not that way. I can go into recovery mode, enter my password, which works, then try to unlock the disk, which doesn't work. It says: incorrect password.

Backups

I do have several backups, with Time Machine and I have an image of the system disk copied to another disk. This is encrypted as well of course, but that is from before disabling and enabling FileVault, so the old password should work there. I tried to restart pressing C to select the startup disk, but that didn't work as intended.

Questions

How can I startup from that other disk? I could even use a clean disk with a fresh system if needed.
What happened to the password when enabling FileVault?
Is there another way to fix the password issue?
Can I make a backup of the system disk before erasing it, if I decide to reinstall? If necessary I can even boot into Linux. If so, how?

I had an image of the system disk on an external harddisk. This image was encrypted. I started up in recovery mode with this disk connected, and selected it as boot partition.

After rebooting, it turned out that the problem I had with booting an encrypted partition happened once again. I rebooted once again into recovery mode, then selected this partition, and selected the bottom option (keyboard not working when trying to login). This option decrypts the partition. Another restart, and I could login to the system on this external partition.

Once logged in, I could unlock the internal system disk, which was not possible anymore after I re-enabled encryption last week. Now I could use Superduper to copy the internal disk to a second external disk, which is unencrypted. After completing this, I could reboot from this disk, which was an up-to-date system. This is a rather slow HDD, even with USB3, compared to the internal SSD. Booting takes ages.

Having this setup, I could copy the system back to the internal SSD, unencrypted.

This Macbook Pro Retina (2015) has 2xUSB3 and an internal 120GB SSD. The setup was as follows:

MacOS: System disk: 1st external HDD via USB3 (this is an older backup)
SSD: Not working internal system disk: 120GB internal SSD
Backup: 2nd external HDD via USB3

Superduper actions:

Unencrypt 1st external disk, because it wouldn't work encrypted as well.
Superduper copy encrypted SSD to unencrypted Backup disk, running MacOS on 1st external disk.
Remove 1st external disk and startup from backup disk which now has a copy of the internal system.
Superduper copy of external backup HDD to internal SSD, unencrypted.

The second step took 3 hours for 100GB. I then removed some folders which were not important, after which 80GB remained. It took 16 hours to complete step 4. I don't understand this, but I'll create another question about this.

All in all, I have a working system right now, although unencrypted, and for the time being I'm not going to encrypt again. Options are to create an external test SSD with a copy of the current OS, stripped down, encrypt that and see how that works out. Another option is to install from scratch, encrypted, and see how that works out, while keeping a synced SSD available.


Can a monitor connected with Thunderbolt 2 power a mid-2013 MacBook Air? Want to buy an external monitor for a mid-2013 MacBook Air. Am wondering whether one with a Thunderbolt 2 port will be better in that it will also power the laptop. Else I'll buy one with USB-C to power the next laptop I buy, and use a USB-C to Thunderbolt 2 cable/adapter for now.

Can a monitor connected with Thunderbolt 2 power a mid-2013 MacBook Air?

Essentially, no. While Thunderbolt 1 & 2 can power downstream devices, the maximum amount of power is not that much, and there does not appear to be any provision for powering upstream devices including the host computer. Macs can certainly not be powered/charged via a Thunderbolt 1 or 2 port. Thunderbolt 2-to-3 adapters do not change this and do not retroactively enable more power delivery on the Thunderbolt 2 side.

The Apple Thunderbolt display actually had a MagSafe connector in addition to its Thunderbolt cable in order to power a connected MacBook.

  Else I'll buy one with USB-C to power the next laptop I buy, and use a USB-C to Thunderbolt 2 cable/adapter for now.

If I understand you correctly, your plan is to buy a display with USB-C as the display signal input and power delivery, and connect it to the Thunderbolt 1 or 2 port on a Macbook?

This won't work. There are reports that you can do this with Thunderbolt 3 based displays (e.g. LG Ultrafine 5K but note your MacBook Air does not support 5K), but it most definitely will not work with a display that simply uses USB-C with its DisplayPort alternate mode. It's not clear exactly which adapter you were planning to use but:

Simple USB-C to (Mini) DisplayPort cables can only be run in one direction: USB-C on the host (computer) to a DisplayPort on the display.
Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapters such as Apple's only work for transmitting Thunderbolt signals, not USB or USB-C's DisplayPort alternate mode.

If you want to buy a display that will power a future USB-C based laptop, choose a model where the USB-C port/cable with power delivery is merely one of multiple ports. You can then use either an HDMI or DisplayPort input on the display to connect to your current MacBook Air.

Note that the 2013 MacBook Air only supports DisplayPort 1.1 and HDMI 1.2, which limits the maximum resolution and refresh rate:

DisplayPort 1.1 supports up to 2560x1600 at 60Hz; depending on the specific Intel GPU and driver you may be able to drive a 4K display at 30Hz. (From personal experience, the early 2013 MacBook Pro and the 2012 Mac Mini have trouble with this; during boot and in macOS 10.12 and earlier, there is image corruption. Once booted up, 10.13 and newer seem to work ok at 4K @ 30Hz. The 2013 Air has a slightly newer CPU/GPU, so I'm not sure how it behaves.)
HDMI 1.2 (via Mini DisplayPort to HDMI cable on a MacBook Air) only supports up to 1920x1200 at 60Hz.


Know of any features or tips and tricks in OS X 10.7 (Lion)? Kind of like this: Please share your hidden macOS features or tips and tricks but specific to OS X Lion 10.7.x ONLY

Do you know any hidden or little-known nice feature of OS X 10.7 (Lion)? It doesn't matter what it is—maybe just a short terminal command. Share your experiences on hidden OS X features here.

Please post one tip per answer. Please also check to see if your answer has already been posted - duplicate answers will be deleted. To search the answers of this question you can use inquestion:18677 (or inquestion:this, directly from the question page) in addition to your search terms in the search box in the upper right hand corner of this page.

Also provide details on how to achieve that feature, and if possible, include a relevant image too!

Holding ⇧ and/or ⌥ while resizing a window retains the aspect ratio and/or anchors the windows center, respectively.


Where are Reminders stored on disk? I did a clean install of El Capitan and would like to retrieve my Reminders from my Time Machine backup. Which files exactly do I need to restore?
I have read reminders are stored in ~/Library/Calendars, but restoring that folder does not recreate the Reminders and also makes my Calendar completely blank.
Where do I need to look?

Edit

I did find that reminders reside in ~/Library/Calendars/<UUID>.calendar/Events/<UUID2>.ics, but simply copying the entire ~/Library/Calendars and ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.reminders/ directories does not help.

While simply copying the directories mentioned in the question does not help (presumably, there is some database somewhere containing the uuids to the calendars and one has to copy that as well), it is possible to manually import the *.ics files by simply opening them.

Update

It seems that copying the folders and then rebooting actually does restore the reminders (or probably logout-login will suffice).


Macbook pro 15" keyboard freezes only function keys work I am facing a very weird problem with my MacBook Pro 15". I was working in Xcode 4.2 and when I option-click in simulator (to simulate multi tap) my keyboard stops working.  The weird thing is that only the a-z and 0-9 keys are not working...

By the way I am using a bluetooth mouse... and recently updated my system to MacBook Pro EFI firmware update and I am running OS X 10.7.2 Lion.

I had to restart my system to get the keyboard functionality back.

Is this a bug in the OS? How can I get rid of this problem?

Thanks in advance

Finally got it. I was pressing option keys lot of times and pressing it 5 times enables mouse keys (which disables keyboard keys).

To reverse, go to "Settings -> Accessibility -> Mouse and Trackpad" and uncheck "Press the option key five times to turn Mouse keys on of off" or simply uncheck "Enable Mouse Keys."


Verizon message+ does not sync your own texts with iphone texts My friends are using Verizon's Message+ app for a group chat.  I would like to participate.
The primary problem is that when I send messages from Message+, the messages that I send do not show up as text messages in the iPhone iMessage version of the conversation.  So I can only see what I text from the Message+ app.
Everyone else can see my messages in both places.  I cannot find anything in the iPhone settings to change this.
[This problem makes no sense... why would the app not sync my own messages with my own phone, when it shows it to everyone else, even though some people don't have iPhones (some are on android)? ] (Original)
Edited: Everyone else can see their own texts in both apps, but I cannot.  There must be some setting to toggle this, but I cannot find it in either app's settings.  None of my friends toggled any settings from default, nor did I.  Any help is appreciated.

Ask Verizon why their app does not have some feature you think it should have.
Re why you think it's strange that the recipient sees the message in both apps... what else did you expect to happen?  Verizon's Message+ does not implement a different communication channel, it's a received SMS.  Of course both are going to show it, they'd be useless if they did not.


How do I download PDF file? I am doing web-browsing with Safari on my iphone, and I have opened up a pdf.
How do I save the pdf on the iphone? What if I don't want to save it as "ibook"?

Thx

You can choose to save it as "ibook" first. And then email your PDFs in iBooks. Last, you can sign in to the email on your computer and download the PDFs.


How to export Pages document to .docx? This question is pretty similar to this one:

How can I save a Pages document to .docx?

Unfortunatly, the answers provided to this old one don't work with:

Mountain Lion        10.8.5
Pages ’09            4.3

I already found a transition path which is going through the following steps:

From Pages export as a .doc,
Open the .doc file with LibreOffice and save it as a .docx file.

Unfortunately, this conversion leads to files containing a lot of useless
list styles which are a real trouble to continue working on the converted file. See this related question on these useless styles:

Get rid of WW8Num* list styles upon exporting from Pages?.

How to export a Pages document under .docx format?

The current Pages beta on iCloud.com gave a very faithful export from Pages > Word .docx format (I shared the document with myself by email, but there may be a more appropriate way for you to do it). You can drag and drop a Pages file from your desktop into iCloud without fear of irreparably converting your original Pages '09 file.


How do I remove the Google Chrome notifications bell icon from the Mac OS X menu bar? This bell icon showed up in my menu bar one day and there's no obvious way to disable it. How do I get rid of it?

edit: The option described below has been removed from Chrome. This should void the question as well as my answer.

Old answer:

In the Chrome Menu Bar under "Chrome -> Hide Notification Icon" you can get rid of the bell without having to go through flags (which doesn't work/exist any more!).
It's the Option one from the bottom (I found the information in a comment on osxdaily):


Non-apple USB mouse tracking slowly This morning my (non-apple) USB mouse, a HyperX PulseFire, has suddenly started tracking slowly.

I've checked the mouse preferences and nothing has changed since Friday. I've also increased the tracking to max and it doesn't change.

I've done the reset where I hold down cmd + opt + p + r and no change.

I've manually increased the scaling and tracking to 5.0 and 15.0 respectively using the terminal commands below and no change.

defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling 5.0
defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.tracking 15.0

I'm now out of ideas - anyone experienced something like this before?
Any ideas?

Tried increasing the DPI setting?

  The mouse's DPI setting is adjustable through the home-plate-shaped button behind the scroll wheel.

Source


Is the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M on the MacBook Pro good for gaming? I want to know what kind of games can I play with my MacBook Pro before I purchase them. Can I play something beyond Bejeweled? Type of games that I am interested in playing:

Call of Duty
Counter Strike Source
Civilization

I have a 5,2 MacBook with that Nvidia chip. Being the Civ fan that I am, I used to Bootcamp and try to play Civ IV: BTS but it wasn't pretty. I suppose if you turned the graphics settings way down to the minimum you may have some luck.

Civ V. No hope at all.


Page Up/Down on Adobe reader on mac When a new document is opened, the Left/Right arrows work properly for Page Up / Page Down.

However after having browsed in the document, it frequently occurs that Left/Right arrows only move single characters to the left/right.

I have not been able to discover

what sequence of browsing causes the behavior to change
how to revert the behavior back to full page incrementing

Tips appreciated.

After opening a new pdf the cursor doesn't really exist and depending on your settings Left/Right arrows work properly for Page Up / Page Down.

As soon as you move the cursor into the document you will navigate inside your pdf and Page Up / Page Down won't work anymore with the Left/Right arrow keys.

To restore the previous behavior just click on the dark grey background.
That's a bit difficult if View -> Zoom is set to 'Fit Width', because the gap between document and frame is very small and hard to hit with the cursor.


Reduce quality in Netflix for iPhone? My 3G can't seem to handle Netflix streaming; it stops to buffer constantly.

The quality seems to be way too high -- it seems to be trying to do HD, without the connection for it.

Is there a way to lower the quality, down to maybe YouTube-level, so I can actually stream anything?

Yes, Since a lot of providers have bandwidth caps, Netflix has put in a downgrade quality option to manage video quality.

Login to netflix first, then go to
https://account.netflix.com/HdToggle

Select from

Good Quality.  up to 0.3 GB per hour.
Better Quality.  Up to 0.7 GB per hour.
Best Quality.  Up to 1 GB per hour, or 2.3 GB per hour for
HD.


Bluetooth connection to Sony Bluetooth Headphones (Macbook Pro 2014 / iPhone 6s) I've purchased set of Sony Headphones (WH1000XM2).

They are great, but I can't figure out how to have two simultaneous connections with my MacBook and iPhone.  The headphones will connect to either individually but not at the same time.  I want to have it that I can listen to music on the Mac, and answer a call on the phone when it comes in.  I have tried this with a PC and iPhone and it's fine.

I believe I need to create a A2DP connection on the Mac, and a HFP connection on the iPhone. That's based on the info here - http://helpguide.sony.net/mdr/wh1000xm2/v1/en/contents/TP0001513163.html

I've downloaded Apple's Bluetooth Explorer and tried various settings related to "Disable Hands-free profile" and "aptX" but nothing works. I’m at the stage where I’m testing random permutations as I don’t understand the options.

Does anyone know if this can be done?  Headphones will be going back if not.

That's not the way Bluetooth works.  While you can connect multiple devices (multiple BT profiles) you can't connect them simultaneously.

  I want to have it that I can listen to music on the Mac, and answer a
  call on the phone when it comes in.

This is where Apple's Continuity comes into play.  You can have your BT headphones connected to your Mac and simultaneously make/receive phone calls and have them come through the headphones (or via the internal mic and speaker if you want).


Cannot download fonts on Fontbook In Catalina I would like to download fonts on Fontbook app that is preinstalled on the system.

However, when I choose a font that is grayed-out on the list and click the download button, the download does not work. The download progress window shows up but is gone immediately, and the download always fails.

The font I want to download is 圆体-简. The Fontbook app cannot be re-installed. The download has not been working for months...

How can I make the download work properly?

I tried downloading other fonts that are not installed yet (fonts that are grayed-out), such as Gotu or Myriad Arabic. The download worked properly. Only Chinese fonts (手札体 and 圆体) fail.

You might be able to install it from

  System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/FontServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Fonts/Subsets/

The filenames are Yuanti.ttc for 圆体 and Hannotate.ttc for 手札体.


How to fix OS X Lion being unresponsive? After having upgraded to OS X Lion seamlessly, the whole system became unresponsive. Sometimes, I have to wait seconds for keypresses or clicks to have effect, even sound playback or the Dock animation stutters, while strangely the CPU usage remains low. Repairing my disk and its permissions didn't help, upgrading to 10.7.1 neither. Can somebody help?

FYI: I have a 2.3 GHz 13'' MBP with 4 GB RAM.

This kind of thing is a RAM problem 9 times out of 10. Your RAM is constantly being paged in and out to your (relatively slow) hard drive, causing you to wait. THe best solution is to upgrade your RAM or if it's already maxed, consider getting an SSD.


Keyboard recommendation Has anybody found a good ergo keyboard for a Mac? I've been using an MS Natural KB 4000 for quite a while but I need to retire it and thought I'd look around for something that would work a little better in OSX (mute, volume keys, keys actually labeled for all things Mac-y).

I've been using an Apple keyboard for the last week and while it looks cool, it's just awful to type on for any amount of time. Since I'm a programmer that is an issue.

I checked out Logitech's site and they don't seem to have any Mac specific keyboards any more. Google's not helping out. Any coders out there have a favorite keyboard?

I'm not a coder. I'm a writer of prose and I type 90 words per minute, and like you, I can't stand Apple's keyboards. For years I used an ergonomic keyboard and the original Microsoft Natural Keyboard circa 1994 was the best for my needs. When I wore out my second Natural Keyboard, ultimately I determined that the issue for me wasn't the need for the ergonomic shape. Rather, it was the need for something with a deep, full, springy, clicky key travel, which I find much less fatiguing than typing on shallow keyboards. So these days I've gone back to conventional non-ergonomic keyboards but ones with full-travel clicky keys. The Matias USB 2.0 keyboard is my favorite and it's quite affordable. I also have a Happy Hacking Keyboard Lite 2 (OEM by Fujitsu, I believe) when I want to get totally minimalist. It's also favored by a lot of coders, I understand. It's been on the market for many years, and is reasonably priced.

With regard to a true ergonomic design: Although I have never tried them personally, the Kinesis Maxim and Freestyle models are available, and also in a version specifically for Mac.


Change iTerm2 Profile How can I change the profile of my current iTerm2 session?

If I click Profiles and select one, it opens a new session instead of changing the current one.

You have to "Edit" the session.

The easiest way to do this is to right click on anywhere on the open iTerm2 window, select Edit Session...  A Preferences pane will appear and under the General tab, look for the Profile Name selection box.   Double click on your desired profile.


Is it safe to use my US iPhone/iPad charger with a simple European plug adapter? I'm using the US wall adapter that came with my iPhone to charge it:

When I travel to Europe, is it safe to use this with a simple US-European adapter, or do I need a transformer or some other device to step to the appropriate voltage/current? Do I risk frying my device?

Yes, you can use the simple adapter.  If you read the tiny fine print on the plug end you see "110-240V 50-60Hz" which means it will work on most common electrical systems around the world without a transformer.


How can I force my laptop to shut down when I close the lid? I'd like my Mac laptops to shut down completely when I close the lid. This is partly for convenience and partly for security reasons.

I couldn't find a way to do this in the System Preferences (OS 10.8.1). Is there a way to control it by changing hidden preferences in the terminal, or some other method?

Though it's less and less true thanks to auto save, a shutdown in general may require user action (e.g., from an application that doesn't use the auto save model, or from an application that is frozen or becomes frozen when the OS tries to quit it). Therefore, any solution would not always work, because if the shutdown requires user interaction to complete, it will not finish (unless you want to do a forced-shutdown, which is a bad idea).

Also I should point out that this will do the exact opposite of saving energy, since booting the computer takes up a bit of CPU.  The boot time will also make this the exact opposite of convenient.  And due to what I said above, it won't be secure.

If you care about security, just enable a password when the computer is put to sleep. You can set the computer to shut down automatically at a set time every day in the energy saver preferences, and logout automatically after a given time of inactivity in the security presences (but the screensaver/sleep password is more secure, since logging out won't always work without user interaction either).


macOS Catalina: "App is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the trash." Experiencing a problem with several apps after installing macOS Catalina.

When the app is downloaded from the internet I get the error:

  "APP NAME" is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the trash.

Any workarounds to bypass macOS gatekeeper for specific apps?

Here's the solution. Open Terminal and run:
sudo xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Coherence\ Pro.app

If the path to the program is different, then obviously change it so that it's pointing to your app. For me, I've had several apps not working after the update to macOS Catalina. This takes care of that problem though.


Running two separate instances of Safari in the same user session I would like to run two separate Safaris at the same time. Each Safari having his own session, history, cookies, and so on.

I can do that with two users on my Mac.

But doing that in the same user session would be handier.

How can I do that ?

You can also type in the Terminal.app

open -n -a Safari

This will open an new instance of Safari even if one is already running. Not every application supports this, like Finder or FireFox. Those applications prefers to have one instance running at a time.


Recover iTunes username (email) Using iOS 5.1.1
I have installed an app with an iTunes account which is not currently logged-into the 'App Store' in my iPad 2. In addition, I do not remember which username (email address) I used for that account.
How can I find out, in my iPad, which account was used to buy that app?

If you sync with an iTunes library, hopefully you have authorised it with the account you used to purchase the app. If so, then the app would be in the “Apps” sidebar item. Click on it and press command+I. The General tab will tell you about which account purchased the item.

If you don’t sync with an iTunes library, your only option is to go to the App Store, sign in with all the accounts you know one by one, and check the purchased items for that account.


How to switch from Spotlight to Alfred via Terminal? I installed Alfred through homebrew-cask. I want to disable Spotlight and let Alfred be opened with Cmd+S.

The first Terminal-based solution I tried was unloading Spotlight with sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist. However, this makes homebrew fail with "couldn't get the client port", and it's known.

The second one was to change Spotlight shortcut by accessing System Preferences -> Spotlight and disabling the option "Spotlight menu keyboard shortcut". It worked.

What I still don't like is that this solution isn't portable, and I can't add that to my dotfiles. Also, Spotlight still runs, but I think I will have to deal with it because I need homebrew to work.

Alfred requires Spotlight to function properly.

  Alfred relies on the same OS X metadata index as Spotlight. As such, it's important for you to let Spotlight run on your Mac to maintain an index of the files on it.

http://support.alfredapp.com/kb:spotlight

This answer to a similar question provides a shell command to stop Spotlight's GUI only, which will disable Spotlight's shortcut.


Is it a bad idea to have a shared Apple ID for purchases that also is used for iCloud? There is lots of advice that suggests using a shared Apple ID for purchasing things (so that all devices using that Apple ID for purchasing can access those purchases) and to then use a separate Apple ID for iCloud for each "user".

This makes perfect sense to me, but what should be done if there is currently 1 Apple ID (my account) that is used for all the purchases and also is used for my iCloud, and I want to add another user to the mix?

What problems will there be if my Apple ID is used for the purchases on all devices and also used for my iCloud account for my user, while a different Apple ID is used for iCloud for a different user?

Note: The places this would apply to would be my iPhone, another iPhone, and 2 user accounts on an iMac (one for me and another for the other user)

In your first question you ask:

  what should be done if there is currently 1 Apple ID (my account) that is used for all the purchases and also is used for my iCloud, and I want to add another user to the mix?

To enable you to share purchases the new user will use your Apple ID for the App Store and iTunes. This use would then create a new Apple ID or use an existing one for the iCloud portion. They would assign this Apple ID to iCloud by clicking Settings -> iCloud -> Account.

Secondly you ask:

  What problems will there be if my Apple ID is used for the purchases on all devices and also used for my iCloud account for my user, while a different Apple ID is used for iCloud for a different user?

This is the solution I noted above, and the preferred method. By separating iCloud accounts for each user you'll have less devices competing for the 5 GB of free space allotted by default.

In summary:

All devices use Apple ID for Store (Settings -> Store -> Apple ID)
Your devices would use your Apple ID for iCloud (Settings -> iCloud -> Account)
Other user's devices would use a unique Apple ID for iCloud (Settings -> iCloud -> Account)
There are no drawbacks to sharing an Apple ID and using individual accounts for iCloud.


How to install rpm tool on Mac OS X 10.8? How to install rpm tool on OS X?

Brew doesn't have it yet and the binaries I found so far are too old (not intel 64bit).

I ended-up installing macports and using it to install rpm (port install rpm)

It took about an hour to compile all the dependencies, even if I do have 4 cores and a SSD.


How do I grant irrevocable privacy from user with sudo access? In Unix, any user with sudo access can act as any other user using sudo su. This invalidates any imagined privacy of local files for all other users of the same Mac. Is there any (preferably OS-level) way to work around this and give users of a multi-user Mac privacy from a potentially snooping administrator?

Edit: In my further testing it seems at least Keychain is blocked for the administrator using sudo su. Using security I could see the metadata -- i.e. what websites there were passwords for and titles of secure notes -- but not the contents themselves. And even if I as administrator reset the account password, the login keychain still used the old password. Also of interest, opening GUI apps using open will try to open them for the actual user(in their GUI context, and only if it exists), not in the GUI context of the administrator.

Edit2: To get into the right frame of mind, imagine a family with one Mac. The kids have been learning about root access and are asking how they can be sure Mom & Dad can't snoop on their files. How do Mom & Dad avoid buying one Mac per kid?

Basically all files stored locally are accessible by an admin user (or any user who can run a root shell). This also includes locally stored/cached files held in Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud etc.

If a user wants to prevent an admin looking at his/her file, he/her should create an encrypted DMG using Disk Utility, should not store its password in the Keychain and should take extra care to always unmount the DMG whenever he/she walks away from the computer.


Text copied from Terminal with formatting in Mavericks (10.9), Yosemite (10.10), and El Capitan (10.11) After the update to Mavericks (10.9), anything copied from Terminal is pasted in the target app with the same formatting as in Terminal, in my case, white monospaced letters on a black background, e.g.:

(I pasted some text from Terminal into a New Mail window.)

Previously (10.8 and earlier) only plain text was copied, without any formatting at all.

This happens in apps that are capable of receiving rich text formatting. In plain text apps, e.g. TextWrangler or TextEdit in plain text mode, only the content is copied, of course.

Can formatting copying be disabled for the Terminal app?

The same happens in Yosemite (10.10) and El Capitan (10.11) as well.

You can disable copy/pasting the formatting from Terminal by changing the com.apple.Terminal preferences file.

Open Terminal on your Mac and enter the following command:
defaults write com.apple.Terminal CopyAttributesProfile com.apple.Terminal.no-attributes

This will strip all text attributes out of copy/pasting from Terminal


Contacts have unsolicited entries I am using Office365 with Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Reminder, Notes (i.e. no Outlook).
Why do I get e-mail addresses added to Contacts?
These addresses are of people I do have in Contacts already.  Why do they keep coming back as e-mail adders only (person@example.com) without name or anything else?
I have deleted all entries from "Previous Recipients" and deleted the unsolicited entries. It did not help.
Is this an Office365 "feature"?
(Mac 10.9.2)

After checking with another account I have on same computer, this seems to be an Office365 "feature." How do I turn it off? I do not see an option in Outlook (web or desktop versions) to stop arbitrary collection and addition of e-mail addresses.

The Mavericks Contacts.app has settings were you can set/decide which one and where from the contacts come from.

Open Contacts and look on left site to see what you have set up there.

Also look at your settings in Contacts-Accounts to see what you have set up there.


How to install terminal application globally? So I mess around with terminal once in a while. Occasionally I find I have to compile from source with the usual:

./configure
make
(sudo) make install

I'm trying to install gtk+ following the instructions on the build page of:
https://wiki.gnome.org

it suggests using a different account for those who have macports or fink installed. So thats what I'm doing.

I realized this means some stuff won't be available, but I'm literally scouring the internet for obscure packages that apparently I don't have, because I can't get past step one: install a bunch of supporting modules. I have XCode installed.

Why isn't at least some of the stuff I installed in my main account showing up for all users? I thought source installation did this by default? like in /usr/bin or /usr/lib?

I don't want to mess with my path too much as the whole point was to have a clean path free of macports/fink influence (I had both).

IDK what the issue with macports/fink is exactly, but is it possible to link against main libraries without linking macports/fink?

EDIT: Is it possible to make some ports selectively available for all users but not all?
I don't fully understand what exactly about macports (maybe just some of the ported utilities) doesn't work with gtk+ and jhbuild. But maybe thats a start

Create a new folder somewhere accessible by all users.
Symlink a number of executables into that folder so that only the executables that you want to be accessible in all user accounts are in that folder.

ln -s /opt/local/yourport /path/to/your/folder/yourport

Add the path to your new folder to the top of /etc/paths. Since this file is read by all user accounts, it is added to the path for all users. However, since you're adding the new folder, you're not adding all the ports to everyone's path.


Previews and Masters in Photos Library After recently recovering my Photos library on MacOS I found another backup that contained the same master files but different preview files. Everything in the other backups's Masters folder were duplicates of my recovered files, but the previews were different, including in some cases larger versions of the masters.

My question is this. Is Previews generated from Masters in some manner that would allow me to ignore it if I believe I have all of the master files?

More broadly, what directories contain files that are absolutely necessary to make sure I don't lose any original photos? I don't care if I lose album data, face info or modifications to files.

OS: 10.12.4, Photos: 2.0

The contents of the Masters folder should be the basis for the Previews folder, I'm pretty sure the differences come from what computer or OS version the previews are generated in (retina vs non-retina making the most difference).

I think it only regenerates them when they already exist if you move a library to a retina computer from a non-retina computer using migration assistant or time machine (my Library was a little larger storage usage wise and thats what I put it down to at the time), and since El Capitan my non-retina Mac (a Mini) has been making bigger previews then it used to as well.

If all you really care about if making sure you have your originals, the Masters folder is all you need to keep backed up. In MUCH earlier versions of iPhoto, the Masters folder used to be called Originals, which made a tad more sense :P

All a little Anecdotal, I'm sorry, but I mess with iPhoto and now Photos libraries quite a bit. Just get bored ^_^


How do I move a third-party application's menulet from one location to another in the menu bar? I bought QuickCal 3 from the Mac App Store recently.  Now, when I boot my Mac, the QuickCal menu icon shows on the menu bar, and where it wants to by default, I suppose.

Since QuickCal has the ability to show the current day of the month within its icon, I thought it would work best if positioned next to my clock.

I'm trying to save space in my menu bar (I have a lot of crap there already, you'll see), so I have "Show date" turned off for the built-in clock.  But, since I want to have the QuickCal icon, I figure it can do double-duty and add back in the day of the month .. my aging brain can still remember the month, anyway.

So, how can I accomplish this:

That is, how can I reposition a menu icon in the OS X menu bar?

I tried dragging, but that didn't work.  Is there a way to do this in OS X (e.g. is there a keystroke I need to use while dragging?), or some preferences I'm not aware of?

I realize my specific request may be a challenge because I want to move a 3rd party menu item in between two OS X built-in ones (The clock, & battery status.)

Failing that, is there a third party tool I need to add to the multitude I installed already?  In the olden days on Windows XP, I used to have a tool called Taskbar Shuffle that permitted rearrangement of icons in the taskbar and system tray .. anything similar for OS X (but for the menu bar)?

Thanks!

You can't move it into the same area as the OS icons.  The only way to rearrange the third-party apps is to close programs and re-open them, because they appear in the order the programs were opened.


Annoying lag while searching in iOS Safari More or less from iOS 8.2 update I suffer a little, but very annoying, trouble in Safari.

I open Safari, I type in the search bar what I need (web page or something to search on Google) then I've to wait from 5 to 20 seconds to launch the command.
Until the table under the search bar is empty, pressing search button doesn't makes happen nothing!

Am I the only one with this issue? Is there a way to solve?

I had the exact same problem! I got the following solution, courtesy of a call to Apple.

Go to Settings > Safari
Select "Clear History and Website Data" (note: this will wipe your history on your phone and any devices that sync their Safari data with your phone's over iCloud.
Change the Block Cookies setting to Always Block.
Close Safari from the app switcher.
Change the Block Cookies setting back to Allow from Websites I Visit.
Enjoy your non-laggy Safari!


Difference between two quite-similar Terminal commands I have a script that I run as part of my development (it's the activation script for a Python venv environment). The way the documentation suggests that we run it is by going to the folder containing our venv folder and running . venv/bin/activate. This works properly (second command in my example).

However, what I would normally have run is ./venv/bin/activate, i.e. providing a relative path to the activate script (first command in my example). This doesn't work at all (although I am not surprised, because the activate file doesn't have "execute" permissions attached to it).

My-MBP:flask-tutorial stephendewey$ ./venv/bin/activate
-bash: ./venv/bin/activate: Permission denied
My-MBP:flask-tutorial stephendewey$ . venv/bin/activate
(venv) My-MBP:flask-tutorial stephendewey$

What is the command that works (. venv/bin/activate) actually doing? I've never seen syntax like that before.

The . command is an alias for source so the two commands are really

./venv/bin/activate

and

source venv/bin/activate

Also note that for the system to actually process a file it needs the absolute path ie one beginning with /

Both files names here are relative ones ie ones that can only be understood  with the knowledge of the current directory which is the variable $(CWD)

The two file names expand to $(CWD)/./venv/bin/activate and $(CWD)/venv/bin/activate  . is the current directory and so both are $(CWD)/venv/bin/activate

The difference between running a command directly or via source is that if run directly as in the first command bash creates a new sub shell and runs the command in that and the commands in the script only affect that sub shell and when the script rends that sub shell is closed and all the changes to environment are lost. source, however, runs the command in the current shell and any changes to the environment remain after the script finishes as if the commands in the script were typed into the current shell.

The activate script (I assume is from Python virtual environment management) works by changing the $PATH so that the correct python environment is found when you use python script.py To do this you need to alter your current $PATH and so the activate script needs to be run using source.

Also see https://askubuntu.com/questions/182012/is-there-a-difference-between-and-source-in-bash-after-all and https://superuser.com/questions/176783/what-is-the-difference-between-executing-a-bash-script-vs-sourcing-it

Not that running a command requires the command to be executable. The command to be run is always a file and that file has to be marked as executable by the system. That is the executable flag has to be set on the file permissions which you can see by ls -l  venv/bin/activate

source however is in the current shell and just reads the file as text and then executes the commands it sees, So this file only needs to be readable. For more on that see https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/291404/why-does-bashs-source-not-need-the-execution-bit I like this answer

  It's more of a convenience thing: Let the system run it for me directly if the the bit is set, otherwise I need to do it indirectly


How do I enable the Debug menu in Calendar? The following command entered in Terminal will enable the Debug menu in iCal (Lion):

defaults write com.apple.iCal IncludeDebugMenu YES

I would like to accomplish the same thing in Calendar (Mountain Lion).

A menu is most desirable, so this is not a proper answer, but here goes …

Without the debug menu

It's possible to do at least some of the things that were possible with the menu.

Top sekret

Some of the things that were in the Top Sekret submenu of the Debug menu in iCal …

Days in week view

5 or 7 days: Use the General pane of Calendar preferences.

14, 21 or 28 days:

defaults write com.apple.iCal "n days of week" 14

defaults write com.apple.iCal "n days of week" 21

defaults write com.apple.iCal "n days of week" 28

The change will be effective when you next switch to week view.

New calendar window

⌘+L is not effective. I'll investigate …


How to find tagged files/folders using the command line in Terminal? What commands do we have for finding tagged files/folders using find on the command line?
I have done a search and looked on this site and found nothing.

The correct command to perform Spotlight searches on the macOS Terminal command line is mdfind.
mdfind "kMDItemUserTags == '<your_tags_here>'"

The list all the kMD codes:
mdimport -A


How can I charge my MacBook Pro at work? I have a 15" 2019 MBP and want to be able to charge it at work without carrying my adapter and cable back and forth. At work I have a Dell OptiPlex 7050 and two Dell monitors (one is HDMI, the other is VGA/DVI). Unfortunately, the way the office is set up I don't have easy access to an actual plug into a wall....

So far I've tried plugging my USB-C cable from my MBP to the Dell desktop. With that, the computer recognizes it's plugged into a power source (gets the little charging icon and says "Power source: Power adapter") but also states that the "Battery is not charging" and the percentage continues to drop. So that didn't work.

Are there any other suggestions?

Would be helpful to get input on a few things:

Is there a way to get the USB-C from the Dell desktop to work?
Would USB-A from the Dell desktop with a USB-A to USB-C cable work any better?
Do all computer monitors allow pass through charging? What would be the best way to go about trying this (HDMI? VGA? DVI? Or USB-A?)

The USB ports in the Desktop and monitors don't provide enough power to charge your MacBook. These ports tend to be build "to spec", meaning they output only about 500mA (USB 2.0) or 900mA (USB 3.0). Sometimes PCs have dedicated charging ports (maybe colored yellow) which provide more than 1A (they exceed the official USB specs), but that's still not nearly enough to charge a laptop. [1]

So you will need to get a charger (or a hub/dock[2]) that supports the "power delivery" (PD) protocol.

You can get them from anywhere between 18 and 100 Watts, and the power output makes a big difference in how fast your MacBook will charge. If you have patience, especially if you're not using the computer while it's charging, you can get away with a lower power (and smaller!) adapter (I use a 56W one, I would not recommend going lower than about 45W). Companies like Anker, Aukey, RavPower make some that are much cheaper and more compact than the original Apple charger.

[1]: The power delivery protocol allows the power supply to step up the voltage in order to provide more power at a reasonable current. The Apple 61W charger goes up to about 3A at 21V (the equivalent of 12.2A at 5V, or 24 times as much current as a USB 2.0 port can provide).

[2]: Note that some of the USB PD compatible hubs need a USB-C PD input in order to provide power on the output, so your best bet is to get a USB-C charger with Power Delivery and skip the hub. The ones that don't need a PD input tend to be (expensive) docks with lots of different ports.

Here are Apple's recommendations for how much power your charger should have: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201700


Which 8GB iPod touch do not support iOS 5? I wanted to upgrade the software to iOS 5 through iTunes but I've never been able to get past iOS 4.2.1 so I waited for a year to see if Apple release another update yet.

I purchased the iPod touch 3rd Generation 8GB 2.5 years ago as I saw in Apple press release that Apple was releasing a new iPods model lineup. My local authorized store did advertised it as 3rd Generation 8GB. The part number was MC086ID/A, yet the seller assured me that it indeed was a 3rd Generation, because the 2nd Generation 8GB had MB part number. As I recalled, the 3rd Gen iPods may receive upgrade up to iOS 5.1.1.

I live 3 hours away from an Apple authorized reseller and there are no Apple Retail stores in my country. Is it possible that iOS 5.1.1 can't be received without authorized support in some countries?

I will attempt to straighten all this out. Apple has a nice tool to enter a serial number into a web site and it will look up what model you have for you.

http://support.apple.com/manuals/#

You can even paste your serial number after the # sign above rather than pasting it into the search field. This is generally all you need to determine which generation of device you are being sold or have been sold.

The simple answer for OS levels for a specific device is to trust iTunes to always update a device if it is capable of a newer OS than it detects: If you connect your iPod touch to iTunes on a Mac or PC and click on the "Check for Update" button, and it does not indicate that there is a new iOS update for your iPod touch, then your iPod touch is already running the most recent version of iOS that it can run. Thus, it cannot run iOS 5.1.

I own a 4th Generation 8GB iPod touch, model MC540LL, and it does indeed run iOS 5.1.1. So it is not true that there is no 8GB iPod touch that can run iOS 5.1.1.

It appears from MrDaniel's link to everymac.com that the 8GB iPod touch owned by @Harriz_shiddiq does not run anything higher than iOS 4.2.1. Here is further evidence:

According to the complete history of model releases of the iPod touch, there is no such thing as a 3rd Generation iPod touch in the 8GB size. The 3rd Generation of the iPod touch only exists in 32GB and 64GB sizes. You can see for yourself in the internet archive's way back machine by examining the treatment of the model comparisons at the bottom of this page. The tech specs make you choose between identically sized models (visually identical externally) to see the specs for the 8GB model for sale or the 32/64 GB model for sale. The latter ones allow for headphones with remotes - the former ones do not. As far as I can tell, this also is a nice way to tell apart 3rd gen and later iPod touch as they can all use headphones with Apple remotes. All 2nd generation devices can not.

The downloadable free app MacTracker provides a database of comprehensive specifications of all the iPod touch models along with their chronological release history. From using this app, I've found the following information.

September 2007: iPod touch 1st Generation in 8GB and 16GB sizes (iOS 3.1.3 maximum)
February 2008: iPod touch 1st Generation in 32GB (iOS 3.1.3 maximum)
September 2008: iPod touch 2nd Generation (MB model designation) in 16GB and 32GB  (iOS 4.2.1 maximum)
September 2009: iPod touch 3rd Generation in 32GB and 64GB (iOS 5.1.1 or latest)
September 2009: iPod touch 2nd Generation (MC model designation) in 8GB (iOS 4.2.1 maximum)
September 2010: iPod touch 4th Generation in 8GB, 32GB and 64GB (iOS 5.1.1 or latest)
October 2011: iPod touch 4th Generation in 8GB, 32GB and 64GB in white color (iOS 5.1.1 or latest)

I cannot find Apple model number MC086ID/A, reported by Harriz_shiddiq, within the MacTracker database. MacTracker reports that there were two Apple model numbers for the 2nd Generation 8GB iPod touch: MB528LL/A, released September 2008, and MC086LL/A, released in September 2009.


Accessing internet on a MacBook Air through iPhone's access to Wi-Fi, rather than its access to cellular data Is it possible to do something similar to iPhone hotspot, but instead of using the iPhone's cellular data connection, it uses it's Wi-Fi connection instead. Thus, allowing a MacBook Air to access the hotspot in order to use the internet through the iPhone's Wi-Fi connection instead of its cellular connection.

I would like to try this because my MacBook Air's Wi-Fi connection is flaky, but when connecting it to my iPhone's hotspot it seems to be fine.

As per http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4517, you cannot use your Wi-Fi connection on your iPhone while using Wi-Fi for Personal Hotspot.

  If other devices have joined your Personal Hotspot using Wi-Fi, you can use only cellular data to connect to the Internet from the host device.

However, if you connect your computer to the iPhone using a USB cable or Bluetooth, it seems to be possible to utilise the Wi-Fi via the phone. In this case the blue statusbar informs the usage of Personal Hotspot connections and Wi-Fi icon is still visible on the iPhone.


Xcode is hidden in OS X 10.8.2 Now I am using OS X 10.8.2. I have installed Xcode 4.5 on my Mac. It has completely installed and I am able to open sample Xcode projects. The problem is Xcode is not displayed in the Application folder.

How can I make Xcode visible in the Finder?

Since Xcode is working without a problem, it is probably installed correctly. You can unhide the application the same way you unhide the ~/Library folder on Lion and later. Open the terminal and enter the following command:

chflags nohidden /Applications/Xcode.app

Xcode should be visible in the Finder.

If you have any problems with Xcode not building or running properly I would recommend deleting Xcode and reinstalling from the App store.


No signal on external monitor after High Sierra upgrade I have a Samsung S24C650 monitor and after upgrading my MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012 to High Sierra I cannot use the external monitor.

I have a hub that connects to the thunderbolt, and from the hub an hdmi cable that runs to the monitor.

The monitor works correctly, It is tested with a linux distro on another machine.
The cable is fine (obviously)
The hub is fine, tested with another Macbook 2015 model

The trouble started after upgrading to high sierra, initially the icons where not shown, computer failed to return from sleep (forcing restart) and last and most important the external monitor gets no signal.

When I plug the hub on the thunderbolt, Macbook's display changes (the computer does recognize that an external monitor has been plugged in.

I also have reFind install for dualbooting into Debian, when dualbooting into Debian the same thing occurs.

Any ideas welcome

Edit: Looks like this is an issue...
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8085619?start=0&tstart=0

I just had the same issue. Found this link to upgrade the display port drivers, it was working again after a installing and restarting: http://www.displaylink.com/downloads/macos


How to run a Tiger 10.4.11 virtual machine? I need to access some .omf files, which were originally created in an old version of AVID DV. As far as I know, this software only ran on Tiger PPC Macs. The PowerMac PPC G5 I originally used is on it's very last legs & will not reliably start up. An AVID rep told me that these old files would not be accessible with a current version of AVID and I have discovered that these files cannot be accessed with Final Cut Pro. What is my best option for getting this software running so I can access these OMF files in an AVID DV timeline?

What I have to work with:

a white Intel Santa Rosa Macbook [3,1 - Build 9L31a] running Leopard
the original MacBook Leopard install discs
a variety of non-bootable disk image clones of a PPC G5 Tiger drive w/ AVID DV installed
the dongle required for AVID DV to run
the original G5 PPC Tiger install discs
the original AVID DV install discs
a Mountain Lion / Yosemite dual-boot Mac Mini
a 2TB blank external USB drive
a 1TB external Firewire drive that I can erase & reformat if necessary
Parallels & Fusion for Mt. Lion

You could try using the PearPC Emulator running on Linux or Win32 (Bootcamp?) to emulate a PPC and boot your drive images.

http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/installmacos.html


Fixing macOS Big Sur Finder SIDEBAR width prefs from command line? My default sidebar width in Big Sur is too small. While I can click/drag to make folders look wider, that fix only works for folders that I open. If any application calls a new window to open - say for picking a file to attach or upload - the default windows that open render differently and my sidebar shortcuts once again can't be fully seen.
When I drill down into those prefs via CLI to change them, there seem to be about a dozen places in the finder's preferences file that mention the sidebar width:
defaults read com.apple.finder | grep SidebarWidth
        SidebarWidth = 174;
        SidebarWidth = 221;
        SidebarWidth = 221;
    "FK_SidebarWidth" = 294;
            SidebarWidthTenElevenOrLater = 217;
    NSNavSidebarWidth = 120;
        SidebarWidth = 178;
    SidebarWidth = 260;
        SidebarWidth = 135;
                SidebarWidth = 248;
            SidebarWidth = 0;
        SidebarWidth = 221;

I'll spare sharing the entire Finder preferences file as it's ginormous, sooo: I have questions!

Am I working with the right preference file?
Which of these mentions is the right one?

Thanks, all.
For @pion, here's the full code pull you'd requested:
WindowState =     (
        BROw,
                {
            EntryPoint = "file://localhost/Volumes/Mac%20OS%20X%20Install%20DVD/";
            ScrollPosition =             {
                h = 0;
                v = 0;
            };
            ShowToolbar = 0;
            SidebarWidth = 0;
            Target = "file://localhost/Volumes/Mac%20OS%20X%20Install%20DVD/";
            ViewHeight = 420;
            ViewStyle = icnv;
            WindowBounds =             {
                bottom = 590;
                left = 597;
                right = 1122;
                top = 170;
            };
        }
    );

Try
defaults delete com.apple.finder WindowState && killall Finder

Update:
Also try
defaults delete com.apple.finder NSNavSidebarWidth && killall Finder


animating text in keynote not in order I'm trying to animate some code snippet like this:

class Person { // 1

  func sayName() -> String { // 2
    some text here // 3
  } // 2

} // 1

Is it possible to animate text like this where the //1 come in at one time, then //2 come in the next animation, then //3 last?

The text is one object group and I tried the different animation options for Appear like Paragraph by group. It only goes from top to bottom. When I select Build Order, it does not let me drag the } from //1 with the first class Person { //1.

Can this be done without separate object groups for each part I want animated?

The short answer to your question is no, Keynote does not allow you to specify which order a line can be animated so that you would be able to achieve the effect you are going for.

Annoyingly, the way to achieve this effect is to have separate object groups for each part that you want to animate. The gif below was generated in Keynote but it used multiple objects, if this is the desired visualisation you want, you will have to create each object to animate them individually.


Multiple recurring log messages in Console. How to diagnose and correct? I'm trying to clean up my Mac a bit, and in doing so I noticed a few repeating error messages in the console. The first goes off every couple of minutes:

coreaudiod[12074]: Disabled automatic stack shots because audio IO is inactive
coreaudiod[12074]: Enabled automatic stack shots because audio IO is inactive

Also, I'm getting a lot of:

sandboxd[14589]: ([14589]) WebProcess(14589) deny mach-lookup ATS Query Port 268

These are running a few every minute. Another one appearing a lot is:

WindowServer[115]: CGXSetWindowTransform: Invalid window 0x1925

I'm guessing these aren't connected? But might this be slowing down my mac? Any help on these welcome.  I'm on a Mac Pro, running OS X 10.8.5

The first ones go off whenever there is a sound emitted by the system, like copying a file.
The second is due to sandboxing.
The third I'm not sure, but it has to do with the GUI of the system.

Anyway, they are totally normal. The system generally logs a lot of stuff. I also have many of those logs, but it's in no way creating problems.

If you are worried it may take up a lot of space, you can use tools such as MacPaw's Clean My Mac, that can cleanup log files, caches, and so on. It can also aid the removal of apps, that can leave behind several files.

I got Clean My Mac with a bundle, and started to use regularly since then. Before I would always shun such apps, but I found this one quite nice. It remembers my settings, so I deselect specific locations, it won't clear those out in a manual check.


Why can't Spotlight find an application I know is there? I have this application called Cura Type A, but Spotlight cannot find it, even when I show all results in Finder... Anyone know why?

It is quite possible that your Spotlight index is damaged or incomplete. The app does launch and function correctly, right? If so try rebuilding the Spotlight index.

Launch System Preferences, Click on Spotlight and then click the Privacy tab. Drag your HD icon into this window. Click OK when asked to confirm.

Other housekeeping utilities (like Onyx) will also rebuild the Spotlight index.


How to set up OS X server for serving static files over HTTP? I have OS X Server(.app) installed (because I'm a registered developer, so I got it for free).  I figured it would be an easy way to flip a switch and get a web server for some static files, for my own local testing, but I can't seem to make it work.

There's a default website with location Default (/Library/Server/Web/Data/Sites/Default), and going to localhost in my browser shows a "Welcome to Lion Server" page, so it's definitely running.

I clicked the "+" button, changed the Domain Name to "*" (I assume that means "any", since it's what the default used), changed the port to 8000 (so it wouldn't collide with the default), changed the location to /Users/ken/Sites (which has a demo index.html file already), and clicked OK.  It spins for a few seconds, the window goes away, and I'm back at the list of sites, and my new site isn't there.

I'm sure it'd be easier to install my own Apache or nginx through Homebrew at this point, but I'm invested. How do I make this thing work?

Update: I found /etc/apache2/sites/0000_any_8000_.conf, which appears to be exactly the website I created.  I assumed it didn't work since it didn't appear in the Server list of web sites, but going to localhost:8000 actually works! Something is truly weird.

You do not need OS X Server to serve basic files. The non "server" version of OS X comes with a fully functional apache environment pre-installed. OS X Server is only for more advanced server features which are generally only useful if you're a sysadmin for small business.

To enable the pre-installed apache you just go into system preferences -> sharing and tick the box for "web sharing". Now apache is running on port 80, available to anyone who can access the mac.

You can configure it by editing httpd.conf (for example PHP is installed but disabled - just search for "php" in the config file and un-comment it, then restart apache. htaccess files are also disabled by default). Server Fault is the best place to ask questions about editing httpd.conf.

Since you installed OS X server I suspect you now have two separate copies of apache installed. One configured to run on port 80 (the one in system preferences) and one on port 8000 (the one in os x server).


Unable to install Chrome or Safari extensions after creating new user account Mac OS X El Capitan

This ordeal began when I was unable to connect Time Machine to a newly purchased Time Capsule; it still wanted to hang on to an older external drive which had died. I called Apple and they instructed me to create a new user account and try connecting the Time Capsule. This worked and I was able to back up to Time Capsule.

But. Reinstallation of Google Chrome extensions fails. First I see a dialog box I didn't see before:

Then when I click 'Save', it displays this:

And in the download bar, the item is tagged "Failed -- insufficient permissions".

Extension installation fails for Safari also.

I tried booting into the recovery partition and repairing the user permissions, but that did not solve the problem.

Any ideas?

You don't describe how the Safari extensions fail to install, but if you had the same problem as I you would first get a dialog box saying that something went wrong, and the extension install button is then replaced with a red "installation failed" message.

I solved this by going into the keychain manager preferences and resetting the default keychain. After that all extensions installed normally.

For some reason, every time I started Safari it asked for the password to the default keychain, and being a freshly installed OS I just typed the only password I had -- my user password -- which it didn't accept. Apparently Safari just couldn't verify the extensions' signatures.

I got the idea while reading Repeated "Safari wants to use the 'Local Items' keychain" alert


Is it possible to open a new space with the keyboard? There is a keyboard shortcut to open up spaces ctrl + up and you can press alt to see the new space +.  Is there anyway to create a new space with a keyboard command?

There are only three ways to create a new space in OS X Lion and above:

Press F3 to launch Mission Control hover the Pointer over the top left or right corner, where a window will now appear with a + sign – by clicking the + a new space is generated

drag and drop an application window from Mission Control to the top right or left corner of your screen; the Desktop icon will appear, and a new space is gererated and your window's application is assigned to it.
Once enabling an application's full screen mode by clicking the right-hand corner of an application window's title bar, a new space is generated for the application

  Set Mission Control shortcuts

  1) Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Mission Control.
  2) In the Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts section, open the pop-up menus to choose keyboard shortcuts, mouse shortcuts, or both. If you have a multiple-button mouse, you see two columns of pop-up menus in this section.
  3) Click Hot Corners, then open any of the pop-up menus and choose actions to perform when you move the pointer to a screen corner.
  After you set an active corner, move your mouse to that corner of the screen to see the result.

source1   —   source2   —   source3


How can I initiate scripts to run on my Mac from triggering events on my phone? I would like to replace the mechanism I currently use to trigger scripts to run on my Mac. Currently, I use mostly IFTTT applets that create text files in Dropbox. Then I attach folder actions to those folders that run a variety of scripts.

The triggers for running these scripts range from geofences, proximity to iBeacons, creation of google calendar events that match a search term, completion of tasks in the iOS Reminders app (which is currently broken in IFTTT/iOS 13), IFTTT button widgets, Siri & Siri Shortcuts, receipt of emails that match a search term, motion sensor triggers, etc., etc..

The problem is that relying on IFTTT to create the Dropbox file in a timely fashion is the weak point. Plus, Apple keeps putting up annoying roadblocks to automations that can be a pain.

I’ve been playing around a lot with web hooks and webhookrelay in Node Red on my Raspberry Pi, and that works great, but there are certain things I just need to run on my Mac.

I was thinking I could install node red on my Mac, but it just seems slightly heavy handed and I’d like to know what my options are before heading down that path. So I’d like to know what anyone else does to trigger scripts to run on their macs...?

I use EventScripts in order to run AppleScript when certain events occur, and there is EventScripts Mobile wich is a free companion application to EventScripts that let you trigger scripts on your Mac from your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. You can find a demo on the link provided.

I never used it, but as EvetScripts is very reliable and quite easy to use, i'm gessing that EventScripts Mobile will do the work ! Also, you can try it for free.

(Note that EventScripts Mobile only works over Bonjour, and so is not suitable for triggering scripts on Macs not on your Bonjour network).

Note: I am not affiliated with the developer of EventScripts, just a satisfied user of the product.


Terminal won't receive Control+← or Control+→ I just upgraded to Mountain Lion and I'm perplexed to find that neither iTerm 2 or the standard terminal will not receive Control ⌃+← or ⌃+→, which I typically use to jump words on the command line. I can, however, use ⌃+↑ and ⌃+↓ which I'm finding odd.

I've tested this by opening up cat on stdin and mashing buttons. My initial guess is that OS X is intercepting them somehow, I suspected Spaces (I guess it's part of Mission Control now) at first, but after disabling all key combinations for it, I've come up empty-handed.

Has anyone ever seen this before, or does anyone have any other ideas?

This is because ctrl+← and ctrl+→ are bound to changing spaces in Mission Control.


Not possible to create a sparsebundle image on a SMB mounted Volume I'm trying to create a sparse bundle image from Disk Utility directly on my NAS (through a mounted smb volume):

I then get the following error after a few seconds:

Creating a sparseimage the same way works perfectly.
I however wanted to go to a sparse bundle as the file is afterwards synchronized with Google Drive and sparsebundle are seen as folders and are then more sync-friendly.

I'm on 10.10.1.

Info about the mounted volume:

To use sparsebundles and Time Machine backups, a NAS must support AFP and one must mount the share using the AFP protocol. AFP supports metadata transport that is not carried via SMB shares. CIF/SMB should be used with Windows-based systems. AFP should be used with Apple systems whenever possible.

While you might be able to create a sparsebundle and use it under SMB, I can see no reason for doing so. When you're using OS X, you're best served by using AFP.


Address smart group based on mailbox? Or Tags? I have manually created mailboxes in Mail and would like to create a rule that moves all future email from those senders who currently exist in one of those mailboxes to be sent to the same mailbox. That is: Any incoming mail from a sender who already has a message from that sender in ManualMailbox_A should be moved into ManualMailbox_A.

Is there a way to define a smart contacts group to do this so that the Mail rule can use "Sender is member of Group"? Some other way?

I am trying to avoid having to manually fiddle with putting senders into contacts and groups, and would like to just drag message into mailbox and have all future mail from that sender redirected to same mailbox — and of course have multiple senders put into single mailboxes.

How about this? Go to Mail > Preferences > Rules > Add Rule.

Make sure you have created before: a target mailbox in Mail, and a matching address group in Contacts (a.k.a. Address Book). Hope this works!


What is the maximum safe current for Mac Pro PSU? I regularly put my 2010 Mac Pro under pretty heavy usage, maxing out the 12 core CPUs and GTX Titan Black.  I can monitor the voltage and current using iStat Menus, but I'm looking for a specification of how much current is allowable for each device.  The readings that concern me are Vcore, PVTT, PSU (PSMI), PCIe Slot and Boost.

I believe this system has a 980W PSU, which is 82 amps at 12V.  The readings shown here add up to much higher than that, but my 120V UPS shows that the whole system is using less than 700W.  Confusing.

Not all of the listed items have a voltage of 12 V. E.g the HDD+ODD has only 5 V and the CPUs have a much lower voltage. According to Intel the voltage of the Xeon® Processor X5670 maxes out at 1.350 V and the TDP is 2 x 95 W (and not 2 x 12 V x ~46 A = 1104 W).

So just adding all currents and multiplying them with 12 to get the wattage is not appropriate here.


Can I see if/when someone opens Messages on my Mac? I'm concerned my roommate is looking at my text messages via the Messages app on my computer. Is there a way to know if/when the Messages app is opened on the computer? Maybe a notification or email to my iPHone?

There are a number of applications which let you create macros and scripts and trigger them in various ways. I have the most experience with Keyboard Maestro, so that's what I used for the example macro below. However, as Tetsujin commented, simply password protecting your computer probably makes more sense from a security standpoint; there isn't really any reason someone else should have access to your account.


Access photos from Iphone 5 with a smashed screen that has never been paired How can I access the photos taken on an Iphone 5 that now has no screen? The phone was never 'paired' with a PC. The problem is that any form of interaction with a PC requires use of the phone screen e.g. to confirm pairing.

I use Linux but have access to a Windows machine. Please let me know any hacks. I have tried to install Itunes on the Windows machine but can't pair due to a lack of screen access. It would probably be quicker for me to completely circumvent Itunes and Windows and plug into the linux machine and work from the command line if anything along those lines is possible.

iOS requires screen interaction on iPhone 5 to enable the USB port to access data.

Unless you have FBI budget to buy an exploit, the cheapest path forward is to pay someone to get a screen connected long enough to trust your chosen computer. You mOught spend $50 for that service, so it's really a matter of are the photos worth anything. If so, worth sacrificing something else in the family budget since backups were not kept.

Once the pairing record is set - you can browse the device without a screen attached - this allows your screen repair to be very temporary. At that point, your recovery proceeds like unprotected devices of old.

How to recover photos from an iPhone 3G?


Mac gets very hot when locked and on battery power Mac seems to use alot of CPU power and gets hot when on lock screen/sleeping, and on battery power. I i "forget" to pull the power over night and come back to the mac in the morning, its very hot, which means it just has wasted alot of energy for no good. What's a good way of debugging this and how to fix it? I really don't want the mac to waste power when i'm not using it.

Have you tried an SMC reset? System Management Controller "can resolve certain issues related to power, battery and other features." according to Apple's website.

There are different methods for resetting SMC, depending on your model. Here is a link to Apple's site with instructions for resetting SMC.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295


Would it be possible to create a folder action that can push timed Notifications? Specifically I'd like to attach a folder action that would pass to the Notification center a timed alert that would go off after 60 days... possible?

Enable at:

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

Add a Run Shell Script action that uses terminal-notifier to display a notification:

at 2 months <<< 'terminal-notifier -message "some message" -title "title"'

Replace terminal-notifier with /Applications/terminal-notifier.app/Contents/MacOS/terminal-notifier if you've installed it by downloading the application bundle.

now+5 <<< 'say a' would run a command in five seconds. You can list scheduled commands with atq and remove them with atrm. See man at for more information.


Will Find my iPhone Lost Mode be useful if stolen phone as shows Offline? My phone was stolen last night. I made sure it was in Lost Mode in iCloud and it was immediately in Offline status when I open iCloud. I am positive the thief switched it off. Now I am 100% certain the Find my iPhone option was turned on on my iPhone, but will the "Lost Mode" be of any help if it was not turned on on the iPhone? Would it be showing "Offline" if I did not turn on the option?

Lost mode combined with iOS 7 is extremely useful as long as th phone has cellular service or is connected to WiFi networks that it trusts. The device needs to connect to the Internet to be re activated after wiped, at which point it will enter lost mode and refuse to work again without your password for Apple ID.

Be sure to not remove that device from your account since that makes the device far more risky and expensive to sell, pawn or try to use by the thief or even someone that ends up with the device. Someone could desolder the CPU and try to reserialize or cannibalize the parts, but the quick hit of cash for a stolen device is defeated by Activation Lock and Lost Mode features.

The device shows as offline when it hasn't checked in recently to the Apple servers despite an attempt by the Apple Push Notification service attempting to send a check in request to the last active address of the device on the Internet.

If the device ever gets connected to Wifi or cellular data reconnects it, your Lock request will get sent, acknowledged and you'll get an email. If you are quick, you can log in to find my friends and see if the location data updates as well at that point.