Why does OSX's system font menu sizes skip from 14 to 18?

It dates back to dot matrix printers, believe it or not. Today, fonts are defined by vector shapes and the device rendering them fills them in with as many pixels as it can manage. But in the old days, there were no vectors, just patterns of dots. The font-maker had to draw the dots for each size individually.

The Macintosh team came up with a clever way of rendering the typeface in different resolutions for screen and for dot matrix printer -- the printer could handle 144 dots per inch, so the team made the screen render at 72 dots per inch... and whenever your document had text at 9 points on the screen, the printer would use the 18 point definition, 10 point would use 20 point and so on.

But because each definition had to be created separately and stored separately on the limited-space disks of the day (this was before hard disks -- everything had to run from floppies!), only key size/pairs were chosen. For text fonts, you usually had 9, 10, and 12 (and therefore 18, 20, and 24) and for title or display fonts, you usually had 14 and 18 (plus 28 and 36 for the printer to use). Exceptionally, you could have pairs like 24/48 and 36/72.

Thus the typical font menu in a Macintosh application starts with 9 and goes to 14, omitting 11 and 13, then tends to jump to doubles of earlier sizes.


Time Capsule and Network shares not showing in Finder through VPN

Usually the sidebar shows Network Devices which are announcing themselves and are recognized by the 'Bonjour'-Service. For that to happen the appropiate Ports have to be used, in case of the 'Bonjour'-Service that would be Ports 1900, 5350, 5432 and 5353 (see "Well known TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software products")

My first suggestion would be to check your VPN-Server if these ports are blocked, which would prohibit the Devices showing up in the sidebar.

If the Raspberry is an SMB-Share you can try the following steps:

Open System Preferences » Network
Click the network interface you use for the shares (that probably should be your WiFi Connection rather than the VPN-Connection. You have to try both eventually)
Click on the Advanced button at lower right
Click on WINS tab, and manually enter the workgroup name of the
server
Click the '+' under the WINS Servers list
Enter the IP of the server
Click OK, Apply, etc.


What's the best solution to sync contacts from Mac to Android Phone?

I finally found a solution that I'm happy with:

On my NAS appliance, I installed OwnCloud, which supports contact synchronisation with the CardDAV protocol. OS X support CardDAV out of the box.
On the Android device I installed CardDAV-Sync and Contact Editor Pro (see the OwnCloud doc). Both together cost about $5, but there are free versions that also work well with fewer features. Still much less than $40 for Missinc Sync or SyncMate.

Thus I get the advantages of a cloud solution (immediate updates, two-way sync) and get to keep my contacts private.


Can't listen to music with iPhone speaker

The music slider grays out to indicate that it no longer has control over the volume of an output device. This is most likely because there is a volume control on your speakers that overrides the iPhone's internal volume control.

Have you tried increasing the volume using the control on the speakers?


As of iOS 11.2.6, if using the Personal Hotspot feature, any devices connected to the hotspot will show whatever the phone's public address is (eg from Verizon Wireless).

Interestingly, the phone will show that it is connected to the VPN.

If you run a web-based IP check, the phone will display the VPN's address (as expected), but connected devices will have the non-VPN address.

For example, your iPhone might display 44.33.22.11, because it's where the VPN is, but the laptop may show 77.55.33.11 because that's what the phone has for an underlying IP.

I don't know why this is - but it is what it is.


Photos synced from iTunes can't be deleted on the device because they'll be synced back to the device next time. To remove synced photos, uncheck Sync Photos.


Connecting to one Mac from another shows shared drives that no longer exsist

On the Mac Mini, you will want to open up the Sharing Preference Pane and go ahead and delete all the shares that you wish to no longer have listed.

The changes should be immediate, but I suppose the other computer that connects to the shares might need to log out and in if you are still seeing phantom entries.

Also, there is a slight case your Airport hardware is proxying these shares in case the Mini goes to sleep, so you might want to just shut down the Mini, then the router and finally the MacBook if you can't get these entries to clear.


Macbook not discovering Apple TV for Airplay after Mavericks update

I think I found the problem, my Macbook is mid- 2010. Mavericks multiple-displays through Airplay only works for Macbook early 2011 or newer, as Apple states in this page

  Multiple Display with Apple TV and an HDTV works with Apple TV (2nd generation or newer), iMac (mid 2011 or newer), Mac mini (mid 2011 or newer), MacBook Air (mid 2011 or newer), MacBook Pro (early 2011 or newer), and Mac Pro (late 2013).

However, an app named AirParrot works for older systems.

More information in Apple Forums


Use Dell Inspiron laptop monitor as only monitor for mac mini

You cannot connect the Dell laptop's screen to the Mac Mini.  Not easily anyway.  I am sure somebody could hack something together, and it would involve opening up the case of the Dell, and possibly the Mac.

However, you could use VNC on the Dell, to view what the Mac Mini is "displaying"

I don't think you can use the Kick Start utility to start the screen sharing service on the Mac Mini, so you will need to borrow a monitor form somewhere to get the Mac set up in the first place...

Then, after setting up the Mac, go to System Preferences -> Sharing, and set up Screen Sharing.  Also you will need to allow computers using VNC to connect to it.  It's all there is the settings pane.

Then...  You will use VNC on your ubuntu box (ick, don't use Windows) and connect to the Mac using it's IP address.  You will be able to view and control the mac, from the Dell's monitor, Keyboard, and Mouse.

There will be some lag...  such is life with VNC...


2012 MacBook Pro SSD missing - Can't install macOS

The answer was that the SSD died. Replacing the SSD fixed it.


Is there a way to make my macbook automatically execute a script every time I connect it to an external monitor?

No one answered and I'm still looking for a simpler solution but I've found a workaround creating a little SwiftUI app.
//
//  ContentView.swift
//  HomeSweetHome
//
//  Created by Daniel Falbo on 20/08/2020.
//  Copyright © 2020 Daniel Falbo. All rights reserved.
//

import SwiftUI

struct ContentView: View {

    func execute(script: String) {
        let task = Process()
        task.launchPath = "/usr/bin/env"
        task.arguments = ["/Applications/HomeSweetHome.app/Contents/bin/\(script)"]
        task.launch()
    }

    var body: some View {
        Text("")
            .frame(maxWidth: .infinity, maxHeight: .infinity)
            .onReceive(NotificationCenter.default.publisher(for: NSApplication.didChangeScreenParametersNotification)) { _ in
                self.execute(script: NSScreen.screens.count > 1 ? "connect" : "disconnect")
        }
    }

}

It's basically just a Text object that listens for didChangeScreenParametersNotification.
Since the Text object must be alive in order to listen for notifications, an istance of the app must always be opened or minimized (does anyone have any idea on how to avoid this?).
Every time it receives a notification, it checks the number of connected displays, if there's only one display connected, it executes my disconnect script, else it executes my connect script.
This is what the scripts look like:
#!/usr/bin/env sh
#
# connect
#
open -a Lunar
networksetup -setairportnetwork en0 $SSID $PASSWORD

#!/usr/bin/env sh
#
# disconnect
#
killall Lunar
networksetup -setairportnetwork en0 $SSID $PASSWORD

And this is what the app looks like

This helped me connecting to a wifi programmatically


How to configure local apache virtual hosts?

1. How do you configure your vhosts?

The "Lion way" to do so would be uncommenting the following line in your httpd.conf.

#Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Now you can edit /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf and put your vhosts in there. It's a good idea to start with a default one that will match all unqualified hosts, for example:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  DocumentRoot /Library/WebServer/Documents
</VirtualHost>

Next, you can either add every vhost to the same file, or you can set up a similar system like Debian by including all files in a specific directory next, like so:

Include /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/*

Now whether you symlink files here that exist somewhere else (sites-available) or put actual files doesn't really matter. Personally, I think sites-available is overkill for a dev box (and I don't ever really want to "disable" a vhost), so I just create a file for every vhost directly in sites-enabled or equivalent (in fact I named the directory /etc/apache/sites to avoid confusion).

2. Where do you put the code and docroot for your vhosts?

My actual sites I put in /Users/username/Sites. I prefer to put them under my home directory for easier access in Finder etc. That said, it is good to notice that this directory is exposed by default by the userdir module. Since I don't need userdir hosting, and I am going to configure webroots below, I disabled it by commenting the following line:

Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf

3. Where do you put the log files?

Log files I keep the same (eg. /var/log/apache/*). Again, for a local development box, I believe individual log files for every vhost are overkill. There's only so much that I can multitask :) If you do want separate log files, you can of course configure it that way inside the VirtualHost directive (for example /var/log/apache/my.project.dev-error.log).

4. Where do you put the local application configuration?

Which applications are you referring to? If web application, I keep those together with all other project files. Depending on your architecture, your config files do not need to be under your webroot if that's an issue, in fact typically my webroot for any given project will be /Users/username/Sites/someproject/web, so config files could be at /Users/username/Sites/someproject/config without exposing them through Apache.

5. How do you resolve the name service?

The most straight-forward would be adding each hostname to /etc/hosts. Unfortunately, this doesn't do wildcards. If you feel comfortable with setting up a DNS server like bind, you could configure one locally or on your network to resolve *.dev to 127.0.0.1, for example. Disadvantage of doing that on your network is of course that it will stop working at a different location. Personally, I use /etc/hosts.


re allocate the Boot recovery partition space to the main system

I'd make a backup of your system and then format the partition altogether.

You cant merge the boot recovery with the Mac partition. It's separate so that you can troubleshoot the mac if you need to reinstall it which is what I recommend.

As for resizing the MacOS boot partition to a smaller size, you can try this fix from this question: https://superuser.com/a/985499/841637

  To fix:

  Boot into the OS as normal.
  Open a terminal.
  Repair the disk diskutil repairVolume /dev/disk0s3 (where disk0s3 is your volume)
  Verify the disk diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk0s3
  Resize the partition diskutil resizeVolume /dev/disk0s3 650M
  Boot into the recovery mode
  Open the terminal, don't use the Disk Utility
  Resize the actual disk diskutil resizeVolume /dev/disk0s2 200G (where disk0s2 is the actual disk you want to resize, 200G is your
  size)

Just make sure that your drive volume names are in place of the volumes inserted in the list above.

See if you are able to do this.


Go to System Preferences > Bluetooth and make sure bluetooth is on (select Turn Bluetooth On if it isn't). Also make sure your headset is turned on. Wait for your headset to appear on the list on the right, select it and click Pair.

The actual pairing process might differ depending on the headset, e.g. whether it requires a PIN code or not. The possible PIN required should be found from the headset's user guide.


How do I make my iOS devices use British/Australian/Commonwealth spelling?

Spelling is determined by the keyboard setting you're using. Go to Settings > General > International > Keyboards, and make sure that English (UK) is added. It also helps to remove the US keyboard so that you don't accidentally get stuck in that.


How to specify the target directory with mv?

gfind path_A -name '*AAA*' -exec mv {} path_B/ \;

should work, you can even use find as long as you don‘t need any special functionality only gfind provides. You can also basically use any other answer in the Q&A you link to in the question :-)


Export podcast subscriptions from iOS podcast app as OPML

I've been looking for a way to do this, but can't find a way to do it directly. Here's a workaround.

If you sync with iTunes, then you can export the OPML files from iTunes:

In iTunes 11, open Podcasts and then choose File > Library > Export playlist, then select OPML format.

Or, right-click on the Podcasts entry in the side bar (if the sidebar is not showing, click View > Show Sidebar, select "Export...", then select OPML format.


iOS 7 Apps on iPad show up as installed but are not actually installed

If they are installed, then the App Store should now say OPEN instead of buy, or re-download etc.

You can try to find the apps with Spotlight to see if they are just hidden icons (various bugs can hide your apps on occasion) or genuinely not installed; just swipe down from the center of the screen and search for the apps name.  if it finds it, then:

Settings > General > Reset > Reset Home Screen will bring back all your missing icons, at the expense of removing all your folders and putting the pre-installed apps back to their original positions.


This has happened to me in the past. Seems like the download from iCloud may have been corrupted; try deleting it from your iPhone, and downloading/syncing again.


Where to find shutdown causes errors list?

I've updated that page with more shutdown causes.

OS X Shutdown Causes

Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be an 'official' list.


It might be going into "App Nap"

To disable this for Safari go to Finder, hit ⌘+I and check "Prevent App Nap":

You can check to see if it worked by going opening up Activity Monitor, clicking the Energy tab and seeing if Safari is in sleep mode.


There is no appropriate manner in which to get these files AFAIK. But this is how it's done anyway.

You need a copy of the beta IPSW

MUST BE FIRMWARE FOR FIRMWARE WITH BOOTROM EXPLOIT

ARM11; iPhone 2G, iPod touch 1g, iPhone 3G
ARMv6; iPod touch 2g
ARMv7; iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3g
A4; iPad 1g, iPhone 4, iPod touch 4g, Apple TV 2G

Now follow these steps:

Convert it from filename.IPSW to filename.ZIP by renaming it. In OS X you can just highlight the file, press [Enter] and rename the file extension on Windows, you can just rename it from CMD Prompt

C:\>ren iPhone3,1_7.0_11A4372q_Restore.IPSW iPhone3,1_7.0_11A4372q_Restore.zip
Open the ZIP (WinRAR, WinZIP, Extract, whatever) and extract the DMG file that is really big, around 1GB or more
Move it to somewhere easy to refer to. For this example, I am going to use the root of the drive. You will then need to grab DMG. This can be downloaded here for MacOS or here for Windows. Move this to the same location as the unpacked DMG.
Go to TheiPhoneWiki and find the beta firmware you unpacked, and click on the Build Number. This will bring you to a page showing at the top the Root FileSystem Key. Copy the RootFS Key for the corresponding IPSW. I will use BETA 1 as the example.

Use the following syntax to decrypt the DMG:

./dmg extract [main-fs-dmg] rootfs.dmg -k [key]
This will decrypt the DMG for you. Once you have this, navigate to:
/InnsbruckVailPrime11A4372q.N90DeveloperOS/Library/Wallpapers/iPhone

You will now be able to access all the wallpapers in the BETA versions of iOS7.

NOTE: To make your life easier, I have also included a ZIP link with the iOS7 wallpapers in both the long and short sizes already. Enjoy!

Download iOS7 Beta Wallpapers


osascript to set secondary desktop background?

Quick Google search revealed the following code:

set tlst to {}
--set newtop to (path to home folder as string) & "Pictures:desktop pics folder:BigDipper 916.jpg" as alias -- sample line
set newtop to choose file

tell application "System Events"
   set tlst to a reference to every desktop
   --set picture of item 1 of tlst to newtop -- display 1
   set picture of item 2 of tlst to newtop -- display 2
end tell

Taken from

http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=35840

I don't have a second monitor so I cannot test it.

Hope it helps.


How does GPRS icon look like in iOS 11? (screenshot)

You can find the GPRS icon (and the other status icons and symbols) from iOS 11 here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207354

The GPRS icon is not a graphic icon, but rather the text "GPRS" in a specific font.


How can I run iTunes without installing Bonjour in Windows 7?

not sure if this is what you are looking for but I have, on occasion, done a standard iTunes install and then gone into Programs and Features and uninstall Bonjour. That and Apple Software Update show up as separate items for installation.

What it then leaves behind, I am unsure of. You used to be able to run regmon and watch installs to see what it installed so you could then rip it out by the roots later. But I gather that it is no longer supported. Not sure if Process Monitor will do the same thing.


When exporting from Keynote to Html, some animations (flip and orbital) don't work

Most 'advanced' animations don't work in the exported HTML presentations from Keynote '09. This is a known limitation of the software and does not appear to be a bug1 since the animations are replaced with the Dissolve animation.

Keynote 6 has much better HTML export using iCloud with support for most of the animations in the latest browsers. If you need such animations, consider updating to Keynote 6 or use Keynote for iCloud.

  Choose beautifully designed slide transitions ranging from smooth fades to elaborate animations so engaging you may forget you’re working in your browser.

1 I'm sure I remember reading somewhere a list of animations which weren't supported in HTML exports from Keynote '09, but I can't find it now.


Making Apple USB SuperDrive work with other Apple Hardware

You can edit a plist file by following the instructions found here to enable it on your system, however be aware you won't be able to boot from it (such as installing an OS via CD/DVD at boot).

I have no idea why Apple place the limitations on things like this, other than the potential that it makes things difficult for people (such as myself) who want to stray from normal configurations by installing two hard drives rather than a hard drive and optical drive in their systems. By making it difficult for the masses, they create a more stable experience overall as they have more control over the default configurations.

It's a combination of the firmware on the device, and the plist file which tells the OS whether to recognise the device. There's something in the EFI which prevents it working at boot level though which I don't know enough about to provide further information on though.


Open System Preferences > Keyboard > Text

disable the Automatic correction


Export from Mac Photos app while keeping date created data?

Note that, in order for your files to have a created date that matches the EXIF "photo taken" date, you must use Export Unmodified Originals. Modified images may have been edited within Photos which results in a new file being created, and using the normal Export will export that modified file with the later creation date.

There are some options in this post on Photography SE for changing a file's creation date to match EXIF data. You should never attempt to use these on files within the .photoslibrary bundle! Export your files first.

ExifTool is a very powerful command-line application for reading and writing EXIF data in a variety of files, including videos. However, on Macs, it cannot write the file creation date. There's a way around that using a bit of bash scripting.

Here's a command that will work for both photo and video files:

for file in *; do SetFile -d "$(exiftool -p '$CreateDate' -d '%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S' "$file")" "$file"; done

Essentially a loop is run over files in the current directory. exiftool is used to read the EXIF creation date tag, and SetFile is used to write as the file's creation date. The way it is written, it will affect all files in the current directory, so I suggest you move all files that you wanted modified into a directory with nothing else in it, and run the command from that directory.


How do I clear the purgeable area on my disk?

You can create a huge file that will force macOS to clean purgeable files to free you space. Do do so, type this command in a terminal:

dd if=/dev/zero of=~/hugefile bs=15m

It will create a file called hugefile in your home folder, which you can check the size with Get Info and stop when it's big enough for you, using ControlC. Or you can simply let it run until you are out of space in the disk and things start to stop working.

This command takes a long time to allocate the memory, you can also stop it when it's 5~10GB and duplicate the file CommandD to create copies and speed up the process.

Then, you just need to delete the files, obviously.

In your case, you already have the file you want to copy, so you could split it into 50 GB chunks and copy one chunk over. Then let the system purge files and repeat. Once you have all the data over, you can combine them - adding the second file to the first, deleting the second file, etc...

How to merge files after using split command from terminal?

The main problem is that “purgeable” space is not one monolithic item - it is potentially local time machine or filesystem snapshots, cached data, derived data, iCloud photos at full resolution that will be downsampled as you start to get closer to no free space available.

The system will self correct if you can bring the data over in two pieces in your case, or in n-pieces in the general case.


Using a SuperDrive temporarily for one time installations?

You can use the CD drive of any other computer (Mac or Windows) on your network, for free. See this Apple doc for directions.


Building webkit2-gtk with macports, errors sys/types not found

Your problem is that you have specified a non-existent sysroot directory.

Currently you have specified the following:

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk

This is usually due to either not having Xcode installed, or having it installed in the wrong version. Even if Xcode runs, it may not be "installed". Check that the App is in /Applications, if not drag it from wherever you extracted the .xip into the Applications directory.

In your case, I would suggest installing Xcode, if it's not already installed, or update it to the latest version to get the 10.14 SDK.

If you're willing to update Xcode for some reason, you can change your sysroot to match the older version of Xcode like this:

Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk

This path points to the latest installed SDK versions. Hopefully it will be enough to build webkit2, or you will be forced to update Xcode.


This is quite easy.

Open wireless networking and remove the password for any/all networks you don't want to join and then toggle the Wi-Fi off and wait a dozen seconds or so before turning it on again.

The Wireless radio will be on and ready for handoff or AirDrop but not joined to any network/SSID. The computer will work fine with wired ethernet and a Wi-Fi radio on but not associated with any network that's in range.


Macbook pro showing "Starting Internet Recovery" instead of AHT

From Apple's documentation on AHT:

  Some Macintosh computers that shipped with OS X Lion and later support
  the use of Apple Hardware Test over the Internet. These computers will
  start up to an Internet-based version of AHT if the hard drive does
  not contain AHT.  An Internet-enabled connection via Ethernet or Wi-Fi
  is required to use this feature. Internet-based AHT functions the same
  as AHT on the hard drive or flash storage outlined above.

What you are using is AHT, it just doesn't have it pre-installed on your hard drive.

EDIT:
You should have the option to perform extended tests, it will be a checkbox you have the option of selecting before running the tests

EDIT 2:
As your mac was made after 2013, you are forced to use Apple Diagnostics, which is why I assume you can't have access to the extended test options you see on the AHT documentation.


Is the blue button outline in dialog windows removed in Yosemite when using Tab (keyboard navigation)?

This seems to be indeed a bug; I reported it on bugreporter.apple.com, the openrdar is here: http://openradar.appspot.com/radar?id=5297887323881472

Also, the latest Photoshop CC 2014 seem to be working ok


Are the new iPads (iPad 3) for sale in the US unlocked for the UK?

If you bought the device without a contract, it's unlocked!

The information about AT&T and Verizon is important when talking about LTE availability in the US. Only AT&T and Verizon provide LTE networks in the US that work with the iPad.

  4G LTE is supported only on AT&T and Verizon networks in the U.S. and on Bell, Rogers, and Telus networks in Canada. footnote no.3 - iPad specs

This is important to note as LTE frequency bands used in Europe, Australia and probably most of Asia are not supported by the iPad. You will use DC-HSDPA, HSPA+ or UMTS instead for fast internet access.


Although you seem fine handling the command line, on OS X it is best to use the Server Admin Tools (like @lupincho suggested). But how can you use the Server Admin Tools GUI when you only have terminal acces?

You can run the Server Admin Tools app from another mac, this will allow you to login on a remote server and change it's settings.
If you do not have a spare mac with the Server Admin Tools installed, you can do the following:

SSH into your remote OS X machine with an administrator’s log in and password.
Enable Remote Desktop (a.k.a. Screen Sharing, a.k.a. VNC) with this command:

  sudo
  /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart
  -activate -configure -access -on -clientopts -setvnclegacy -vnclegacy yes -clientopts -setvncpw -vncpw mypasswd -restart -agent -privs -all

3) Login using a VNC client (such as TightVNC). Your password is "mypasswd" (see the -vncpw flag in the above command;  you can — and should — change this).

Now you can open the Server Admin Tools and do your thing.

4) When you are done, turn of screen sharing using your SSH session:

  sudo
  /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart
  -deactivate -configure -access -off


Prevent redraw of menu bar icons Yosemite

Update 2015-03-04: According to some updated release notes from the Bartender app (v1.2.32; emphasis mine):

  Apple appear to have fixed the flickering item issue for multiple
  monitors in Yosemite with 10.10.3 Beta 2; but in doing so Bartender
  stopped working correctly. We have made changes to Bartender for
  10.10.3 Beta 2 and anticipate it to now be working smoothly; if you see any issues with Bartender please do let us know.

So there may be an end to this problem in sight.

I'm sorry to say that, according to my own email exchange with their Advisors, Apple Engineering's official response is that this is by design:

  This is normal behavior caused by transparency being turned off and on to differentiate between which display is active.

  There are a few workarounds you can try.

  — Adjust the settings in System Preferences —> Accessibility and enable reduce transparency.

  — Disable displays have separate spaces.

  — Enable Use Dark Menu Bar and Dock in System Preferences —> General.

Another Workaround with Bartender

In my experience, I also run Bartender to limit the number of active status bar icons. Since fewer icons have to redraw, it decreases the redraw delay when switching monitors. They still redraw, and it's still annoying, but the increased UI responsiveness helps me ignore it.

Troubleshooting Steps that Do Nothing

I performed the following steps with a Senior Apple Technical Advisor and Engineer during a support case for this same issue. None of these fixed the issue:

creating a new user (and thus a blank user profile)
going into safe mode (including with a new user account)
reinstalling the OS
resetting SMC and NVRAM
running Apple Hardware Test
running VGA dongle diagnostic tools

Detailed Problem Description

Videos of the behavior are posted here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsk5xxSb1

When either one or two external monitors is attached,

via HDMI, MiniDP>DP, or MiniDP>VGA

regardless of whether the lid is open or closed,
and Displays have separate Spaces is enabled,
one can click the desktop on any inactive desktop (the desktop with a grayed-out or muted menubar),
and that display's menubar's icons will begin redrawing,

which manifests as a jittering of icons (expressed as a shifting laterally and vertically),
a rearranging of icons (in the case where one has rearranged them manually by holding down the CMD key and dragging them),
and a brief de-antialiasing followed by a re-antialiasing (or dithering) of the icons.

This occurs with all icons in the right-hand side of the menubar,

but not those on the left (apple, and menu items),
and also excluding the sidebar icon.

The symptoms do not occur when transitioning from one external monitor to another.
The shifting of icons causes a functional delay between initiating the transition and using the application in the destination screen. (In my case, 3-5 seconds.)

The delay's timing appears related to the number of status bar icons you have.

Root Cause?

I expect that this is a software issue related to SystemUIServer or one of the underlying (private) UI libraries. It seems heavily related to antialiasing. Although Apple says this is expected behavior, I think many users would agree this is a bug introduced with Yosemite.


Possible to search Safari's "Reading List"?

Scroll up within the Reading List to reveal the search function.


Is it legal to use WINE to play PC games on Mac?

I take issue with your premise: NO BIG GAMES (with the exception of Portal 2 and Starcraft 2) have been released for Mac this far.)

Evidently, you're unfamiliar with Steam. I don't know what your definition of "big games" is, but in my mind Civilization V, Counter-Strike, Assassin's Creed 2, etc. qualify. Best part about Steam is that if you buy a game, you can download it for Windows and/or Macintosh.

Yes, if you want to play Windows PC games the best option is to use Boot Camp. And yes, you have to buy Windows to install in Boot Camp. Of course, if you were to purchase a Windows PC you would also have to buy Windows.

So, I'm not sure what you expect here… Apple should throw in a copy of Windows for free? Apple should spend money and resources to incorporate Wine or Cider into the OS and go through the tremendous support and legal headache while simultaneously cutting its developers off at the knees by allowing Windows applications to flood the ecosystem? — not that it would ever happen… ;)

Apple's last OS update, 10.6 was a $30 upgrade. 10.7 Lion will also be a $30 upgrade. Seems to me your beef should be with Microsoft's pricing of Windows. (Oh, and lazy/cheap game developers of course. heh.)

To answer the central question: Wine and Cider are both legal, since they use no code or binary data from Microsoft's implementation of Windows.


Given the strength and scratch resistance of Gorilla Glass, are cases of value for iPhones?

I have an iPhone 4S.  Like you, I originally thought that I ought to get a protective case for my iPhone.  I tried several cases, but none of them were satisfactory (too bulky, too cumbersome to open to get to the phone, too ugly).

I now have no case for the phone, and I keep it in my trouser pocket all the time.  Instead of getting a case for the phone, though, I got a key case for my keys (which I keep in the same pocket) to prevent them scratching the glass!  That solution has worked well - the iPhone is now over a year old but looks as good as new, and I haven't added any size or weight to it.


In general, extensions should only be installed from trusted sources. See the popup that appears when you attempt to install an extension below. Unlike Chrome's extension API, Safari does not require that extensions request specific rights from the browser that the user must in turn grant when installing the extension, or specify a set of domains that the extension is allowed to operate on.

The developer of a Safari extension must, however, be part of Apple's Developer Program, and must obtain a signed security certificate from Apple for an extension to load in a user's browser. Unlike iOS or Mac App Store apps, though, this does not mean that Apple reviews extensions that are not hosted in the Safari Extension Gallery on apple.com.

The second part of your question is out of scope for this site, as it requires interpretation of Google's TOS and Privacy Policy (as linked from the page you linked).


Go to Preferences > Rules. See if any rule is deleting VIP messages.

If any rules rules are deleting VIP messages, Just delete Them.


macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 empty trash sound playing repeatedly

If you are able to perform all your other tasks normally just like before and no longer hear the trash sound, you should be fine and there should be nothing to worry about.

Do test that the other audio is playing fine. You can also attempt to create a temporary file/folder, move it to trash and empty it to ensure that the sound plays only once.

Since restarting your computer has fixed the issue, it was most likely due to some bug in macOS High Sierra.

In cases like this, restarting is the first resort towards fixing.


The Document Foundation Wiki has a page about LibreOffice Vanilla for Mac, which explains the differences.

There are some differences in functionality. LibreOffice Vanilla for Mac omits some Java-based features. The upshot is that Base cannot use the HSQLDB engine, and is lacking some reporting features. Java-based extensions won't work either.

The wiki page includes a detailed list of build flags used to compile the Collabora versions, which provide further detail. (Caveat: it's a wiki, so this may not be up to date.)

Note that Collabora's post LibreOffice Vanilla: Fresh from the community to your Mac does not mention these functional differences.


Monitor not displaying color red. Is this the monitor or some setup I'm missing?

There are applications that let you control how much of each color component in the display generated by your machine gets to the monitor. An example of this is Dark Adapted.

These are useful for adjusting your monitor for night time viewing, and other special cases. Unless you have something like this running on BOTH the machines, it's likely that the problem is either with the monitor itself, or with the cable.

Are you connecting via VGA or DVI? A problem with the cable wouldn't manifest like that on DVI, but could on VGA, where individual pins literally correspond to component colors. If on VGA, try another cable and see if that helps. If that doesn't work, it's most likely that the monitor is broken.


How to manually add an artwork to the iTunes Artwork directory?

Just find the track [or the entire album] in iTunes, select it then hit  Cmd ⌘   i  to get info.
Select the Artwork tab then drag your picture from Finder into there.

Unfortunately, this appears to work for just about any format except WAV.
This also applies to an overall 'album' artwork added to the folder rather than files. It will only work if they are not all WAVs.

I'd suggest perhaps converting to AIF, which would be a completely lossless conversion.


To remove all entries from the GPT and MBR tables, open the Disk Utility application and do the following.

Select your disk.
Select Partition tab.
Set Partition Layout to "1 Partition".
Set Format to "Free Space".
Click on the Option... button and select "Master Boot Record".
Click Ok to close the pop up window.
Click the Apply button.

The image below was made just before clicking the Apply button.


Cannot see certain network directory on MacOS

File/Directory names beginning with . are treated as hidden in macOS and are not displayed in Finder by default.

To view hidden items, invoke the Finder keyboard shortcut, ⌘ + Shift + .. This key combination toggles the display of hidden items in Finder, thus re-invoking it will hide the display of hidden items.

When using a Non-Apple/PC keyboard, the key equivalent to ⌘ is Window key. (This key is generally referred to as Meta key).


Upgrade OS X with Windows already installed using Boot Camp - will it break anything?

If you're doing just a straight upgrade and not a complete rebuild, then it should be absolutely fine. OS X upgrades are aware of other partitions so it shouldn't break anything.

By the way, I know this is not question, but I used to use Boot Camp, but find Parallels a much better experience overall. Disclaimer, I'm a .net developer.


Desktop Groups (Which I would describe as the best alternative to fences) is made by the same people who make Desktop Shelves. The product is paid, but the Lite version of Desktop Groups is free.

A good review of its features can found here courtesy of Fatima Wahib who reviewed it for Addictive Tips last month:


OS X El Capitan - How do I specify individual sets of Hot Corners for different Virtual Desktops?

Hot corners are independent of Spaces & are unaware of which Space you're in.

I would say 'it can't be done' but it would be nice to discover I'm wrong :-)


Can I upgrade my MacBook with more than 4GB of RAM?

You can add up to 6GB of RAM in your MacBook. You can see the list here.


After searching around the internet, it sounds like other people are having this same issue. You could try contacting Apple to get their advice, but it will probably be easier to just spend the £10 credit on something and then try switching again.


how to move the 'New MacVim Buffer Here' menu into the main context menu?

I don't think there is a "clean" way to specifically move a single service item in the context menu.

What you can do is increase the amount of items allowed in the context menu before a submenu is created.

In Terminal.app:

defaults write -g NSServicesMinimumItemCountForContextSubmenu -int 7
killall Finder

This will allow up to six elements in the top level menu. Substitute 7 with the desired number.

Unfortunately, all elements from your submenu will be moved up, not just the MacVim one.


Alt+3 no longer types ‘#’, types ‘£’ instead

The only keyboard layout that has Alt3 as hash # is the one called British: all others have Shift3

So you need to change the input source to British.

Note most developers have the opposite issue and want to match US and all Windows and Unix keyboards to have Shift3 as #


Apple legal agreements are at https://www.apple.com/legal/sales-support/
The theft plan is specific to each US state, so you might have to read the entire document so you are comfortable with it.
Just as in the past, the plan may not cover you outside the country of purchase per the contract wording for the state of Minnesota plan.

4.1 Coverage Area
We may restrict your coverage benefit to the country where the Covered Device was originally purchased subject to section 6.2.

Assuming you have any coverage event other than loss, the new coverage looks the same as in the past. Covered wherever you are, but if you seek service outside US you either have to ship it back on your dime or accept local services if offered.
As a side note, there's no theft and loss coverage program available in India.  See Apple's India Sales & Support at https://www.apple.com/in/legal/sales-support/


How can I use one of the documents preview icon as the parent folder's icon in OS X?

As far as I know, it's not possible to do so dynamically.

What you can do is change the icon manually (but then you have to do it for each folder of course...).

Open your icon with Preview. Then copy the image by using the build in copy/paste functionality. Select the whole image with cmd+ A and copy it with cmd+ C.

Then open the 'Info' window (right-click and Get Info) of the folder and select the icon on the upper left corner. If you paste cmd+V the image, you'll see the folder icon got replaced by the image.

And of course, there is an app for that.


If you are missing the Airport/Wi-Fi icon you can enable this in System Preferences -> Network:

For PPPoE services the same option is available once you added the service to the list of networks.


This happens to me sometimes too, what I end up doing is killing the App Store application (going into the application switcher and the closing it) before trying to download again.
If it is still not working is usually reboot the iPad and try again.

Alternatively you can try to see if the app is in your bought history on the app and try to launch a download from there.


Getting my old Terminal back after uninstalling fish

The simplest way to get back your default .bash_profile might be to just create a new user on your Mac. Log in and copy the desired files to that user's shared/public folder. Then log in as you and copy them to the root of your profile folder.

The added bonus of this is that you now have a virgin, virtually untouched, user that you can use when troubleshooting your Mac. Unless you are short of disk space a new user profile is not that big and can be valuable in troubleshooting.


Using OS X Mountain Lion Server and a Leopard Client

1) Yes, I was able to use Migration Assistant to move accounts off of laptops and on to the server.

2) In using Migration assistant the profile on my sons laptop was "upgraded" to a 10.8 (Intel) version.  This profile was incompatible with Leopard.  So no, my sons laptop was not able to use this system.


To receive messages on your iPod, as long as the other person is using a device which is iMessage capable, they will be able to send you texts via iMessage.

To set up iMessage:

On device, go to Settings -> Messages
Turn on iMessage
Once set up, make sure you choose your email address as one that can receive iMessages (tied to your Apple ID)
Have friend send messages to you via iMessage as they would a normal text to one of the addresses provided in iMessage setup

More information can be found here and here


How to stop the hidden __MACOSX folder from being created when compressing files/folders in Finder

Using info from the other answer, here's an Automator Service1 that becomes available in Finder to delete the "__MACOSX" meta-data folder from a zip archive file.

To Create the Service:

Open Automator and select: File > New > Service
Set Service receives selected to files or folders and in to Finder.
Add a Run Shell Script Action, setting Shell: to /bin/bash and Pass input: to as arguments while replacing the default code with the following code:

for f in "$@"; do
    if [[ ${f##*.} =~ ^[zZ][iI][pP]$ ]]; then
        zip -d "$f" "__MACOSX*"
    fi
done
afplay /System/Library/Sounds/Purr.aiff

What the code does: It checks that each file passed to the service has a zip extension, regardless of case, and if it has a zip extension, and if "__MACOSX" exists within the zip archive, deletes the "__MACOSX" meta-data folder from the zip archive.
${f##*.} gets the file extension, =~ tests the regex, and the ^[zZ][iI][pP]$ regex matches any case combination of each letter within the square braces while ^ asserts position at start of the string and $ asserts position at the end of the string. So it only matches zip in any case combination of those letters.
Note: The last line of the code is optional, just to let you know the service completed, and can be changed to a different sound or omitted if you prefer not to be notified by sound upon completion.

Save the Service as, e.g.,: Delete '__MACOSX' from Zip Archive

1 In macOS Mojave, and later, an Automator Service is called a Quick Action. There are also other minor nomenclature differences but they should be more obvious when comparing them to pre-macOS Mojave Automator workflows.

To Use the Service:

In Finder, or on the Desktop if the zip archive is located there, select the zip archive(s), then right-click and select Delete '__MACOSX' from Zip Archive from the context menu or under Services on the context menu, or from Services on the Finder menu as appropriate.

The image of the service in Automator, below, is from OS X 10.8.6, however, it was tested under macOS 10.12.5 and works there as well.


How do I flip a video that is recorded upside down

This works on my Mac with OS X Yosemite 10.10.4.
Open it in Quicktime.
Under the edit menu should be options for rotating. Once you have done that just export the rotated video in the format you want.


Is there an application like Clipper for Mac?

I think you will find something like what you are looking for here 9 Crafty Clipboard Utilities for Mac. Also TextExpander might be of interest too.


It is normal for kernel_task to show those values. This is not something that is a "problem" in any sense, or makes your system slow or anything like that.

The 71.2 GB of virtual memory is indeed virtual - so it doesn't (necessarily) have anything to do with actual memory being used. Your computer most probably has a 64-bit CPU capable of adressing huge amounts of virtual memory.

Usually Intel-based computer have operating systems that limit actual virtual memory usage to either 48 bits or 57 bits. In your case the 71.2 GB of virtual corresponds to just over 36 bits. I.e. it is really nothing - about 0.02% percent of the virtual memory available to the system.


Super simple accessibility app for iPad/iPod Touch

This list of apps is for the people with low vision or the blind.  There was blind guy I met that was using an app that used sound and voice when he moved his fingers across the iPad.

http://www.applevis.com/apps/ios-apps-for-blind-and-vision-impaired


Is there a way to view Unicode values in the "Emoji and Symbols"?

From the Emoji & Symbols panel, top left there's a gear icon. It looks greyed- out always but it's not.

Customise List... scroll right down, Reveal Code Tables & Check Unicode.

The unicode values will then appear in the preview pane for all characters


The application resides in /Applications, the corresponding (app) bundle is called Image Capture.app, but the Finder adapts the name to your language settings (it's listed as "Digitale Bilder.app" on a (Swiss) German setting).

One easy way to start it is to use Spotlight and search for "Image Capture". Should be one of the hits (usually the first), just press Enter to start it then.


FreeBSD Install DVD corrupted my Mac OS X harddisk

Try this:

Put into the CD tray the OS X Snow Leo install disk
Restart computer
Hold OPTION (Alt) key, select OS X Installation DVD
Open Disk Utility
Select your disk, go to the First Aid Tab.
Follow the instructions. The EFI data on disk shall be restored.


Mail.app not showing the "synchronize" option for an IMAP account

Look for it in the Mail--Mailbox--Synchronization

if not there..

Sounds like when setting up that account something went wrong

reset that account

remove it and add it new


I'm experiencing the same thing — there appears to be a rendering bug in Safari. Sometimes I see visual glitches when scrolling, too. It will probably be fixed in a software update in the future.


How can I automatically eject volumes I no longer use?

Thanks to patrix, I now have it working.  I will post something here for others who want to do this in the future.

It seems that cronjob is no longer recommended, instead launchd.  This was the first time I wrote a launch agent, so there were many errors before I got it to work.  I could not decipher the error messages in the System log, but at least when they were there it told me it was not working.

I found a tutorial for a launch agent on robots.thoughbot.com. Some of the ways he uses launchctl are marked "legacy" by Apple, but they still worked for me in Sierra.

Here is my launch agent plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.gae.umount1</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>diskutil</string>
        <string>unmount</string>
        <string>force</string>
        <string>/Volumes/3D</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>10800</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

It is supposed to execute the Unix command diskutil unmount force /Volumes/3D every 10800 seconds (= 3 hours).


How to change my caps lock key to work as a tab?

Try using Karabiner Elements. It's a free, open-source app that lets you remap keyboard keys. It's completely safe to use.


Recover a file after hitting "replace" in copy dialog?

If there was no backup, then I'm afraid that file is gone.  That's exactly why you should always be backing up.


How assign a webpage to a letter in Chrome?

Visiting the example.com/ webpage directly would list that hit alphabetically before any subsequent pages on that site.  But it won't stop you seeing eatmorecake.com first...


8th gen iPad I want to go back to the original configuration after quick start

To restore an iPad to factory settings, connect it to a computer running macOS 10.15 or later, or to a PC/Mac running iTunes. It will show up in Finder (or iTunes) from where you can initiate the restore.
Apple has it documented in detail in Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to factory settings.
If all you want is to run the setup assistant, open the settings app and in general, there is a reset all settings option.

Choose “Erase all content and settings”


You could simply fire up an iWork app, select some text, and browse through the font list in Keynote, Pages or whatever app. They only render the font’s name in the font itself, though, not arbitrary text you type in.


How can I determine the source of these notifications? (macOS)

https://computingondemand.com/
Found this website.

You can also get notifications from websites on your system. Maybe go to the website and check if the notifications are enabled. Click the lock icon to see the notification status.


Display Dock on the main screen on left when second screen is arranged to left

With the screen arrangement below you can accomplish what you want. However, with this arrangement it is not that intuitive to move with the mouse from one screen to the other. I have my MacBook sitting to the left of, and slightly lower than my monitor so it did not take too long to get used to it.


How do I get the weather widget in the Notifications Center of the iPad?

It's not available on iPad. It's an iPhone feature.


Why is my Automator Print Plugin Only Running Every Other Time?

Jacob Walker writes:

  Just saw your note on the Apple Support webpage.  I was able to get past the apparent bug by saving the Automator Script as an Automator "Application" rather than a Print Plugin. I saved it to ~/Library/PDF Services and it shows up and works as expected.

This also worked for me.


Problem with "csrutil enable --without debug" on Sierra

You need to partially disable System Integrity Protection. I do not encourage you to disable System Integrity Protection. It makes your computer less safe.

How to partially disable System Integrity Protection

Boot to Recovery OS by restarting your machine and holding down the cmd and r keys at startup
Launch Terminal from the Utilities menu
Enter the following command: csrutil enable --without debug
Reboot your computer


Try rebuilding the Launch Services database, which populates the Open With menu. It can sometimes get corrupted, which can cause duplicate entries, slowdowns and other weirdness.

If you're comfortable with the Terminal, you can do this with a single command:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Otherwise, a free GUI tool like Onyx can do it at the push of a button.


Command-line tool to ask remote server for current date-time

You can use sntp as standard query tool for either NTP or SNTP servers. You may get, set or adjust the time on your host with it.

E.g.

sntp time.euro.apple.com

shows the time

sntp -d time.euro.apple.com

shows a more verbose response including the current time.

Check man sntp or in the shell man sntp for more options.


Copy file to iPhone app from Mac OS terminal

The feature you are looking for is called iOS File Sharing. You can copy files from macOS into an iOS app installed on iPhone/iPad if the iOS app supports File Sharing.
To copy files into an iOS app that supports File Sharing, you'd need to connect your iOS device to your Mac, and access the device via iTunes app (macOS Mojave and earlier) or Finder app (macOS Catalina and later)
Refer to the linked Apple Support document for detailed instructions:

macOS Mojave 10.14 and earlier:
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201301

macOS Catalina 10.15 and later:
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210598


Calendar loses custom "open file" alerts

This drove me crazy at one point too.  Make sure you are putting these events onto a local calendar, and not an iCloud calendar.  File open alerts won't work unless they are on a local "On My Mac" calendar.


MacBook Pro takes longer time to open some apps while connected to wifi

Starting with macOS Catalina, macOS now automatically sends the signature of every executable you open to Apple. Obviously, if you don't have an internet connection, it won't check with Apple's servers. When you do have an internet connection, it must send the signature to Apple's servers, then wait for the response. This is made worse by slower internet.


Adjusting the scale in GarageBand track visualization?

If you double click the track it will open the track editor which is a larger view that can be adjusted. Other than that I don't think GarageBand has that ability (unlike Logic).


Explicit content music not appearing on my iPhone

One thing you could check is whether Resrictions are enabled on your iPhone.

To do this:

On your iPhone tap on Settings
Swipe up and tap on General
Look for the Restrictions option and check to the right of it to see if they are Off or On.
If Restrictions are Off, then it won't be a restrictions issue and you can skip the rest of these steps.
If Restrictions are On, and you know the restrictions passcode, then tap on Restrictions and enter the passcode.
Once the Restrictions list appears, swipe up until you see the Allowed Content list
The second item on the list includes your Music restrictions. Tap on this and check to see if Explicit is enabled or disabled. If it's toggled to Off then you can't play back explicit music. If it's toggled on (i.e. it's green) then you can.

NOTE: If you get to Step 5, the restrictions passcode is most likely not the same as your iPhone's normal passcode. So if you try entering that and it doesn't work, do not keep trying to enter it. Instead you will need to speak to the person (e.g. a parent) who would have enabled restrictions to begin with.


Macbook Pro Retina and Dell u3011 video driver problem

Incredibly late answer, but I had the same issue and what worked for me was to reset the NVRAM.


If I recall correctly, Time Machine will notice if there are existing backups on the disk you select and ask if you want to reuse the old backup data.

I haven't tried personally but looks like you can use the tmutil command to inherit a backup, too:

sudo tmutil inheritbackup /path/to/backups

See also:  http://pondini.org/TM/B6.html


App Store on iPad 2 keeps asking for AppleID password when attempting to update apps

It's very possible that you've opted to "require always" at some point. To undo it, do the following:

Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
Tap on General.
Tap on Restrictions.
Tap on Require Password under the Allowed Content section.
Tap on 15 minutes (yours is likely set to Immediately).

OR

Click Settings.
Click Touch ID & Passcode (May be named something else if you don't have touch ID).
About 75% down the right column should be "Require Passcode" with an option to change between Immediately or not. If you have Touch ID enabled, you may only get the one choice.

Source


Is there a way to combine two fullscreen windows into a split view window with Automator/AppleScript?

Do you need a real fullscreen or are you trying to achieve something like this?

There are dozens of apps to do this so one of them will have AppleScript or key shortcuts. See:

How to arrange two windows easily to left and right side?
What Window Management Options exist for OS X?


iPhone: transfer audio from Whatsapp to Music library

Hit the share button and send it to yourself via email. Then, open your mail in iPhone and it will download the song. Long press on the name of the song until it asks which application to open in.

There, you can open that song in your preferred app (but not not the iPhone music library) like i downloader, and also  download it to your OC from the emails.


Stop Chrome from switching to dedicated GPU

I was having an issue with gfxCardStatus not being able to switch to the Integrated Intel GPU because of a Google Chrome Helper task. My mid-2010 Macbook Pro has a bad discrete GPU so of course that is pretty inconvenient. This worked for me:

Go to chrome://settings and set the Use hardware acceleration when available option to off:

Put this in the omnibar to find this setting easily:

chrome://settings/?search=hardware


Font smoothing is wrong after Mavericks update on MacBook Pro with high-res display (not retina)

The system font was changed to a modified version of Lucida Grande. It was mentioned in the What's New in Cocoa presentation:

The normal Lucida Grande doesn't seem to have changed:

There is still this hidden preference for using a lighter text rendering style:

defaults write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 1

Quit and reopen applications or log out and back in to apply the changes.

The regular faces of the new and old versions don't look that different, but the bold face seems to be bolder in the new version.

The screenshots posted by gooogalizer have bigger differences though, so maybe the new version is rendered in a different way on high-resolution displays, or maybe something else changed in the way text is rendered on high-resolution displays.


Absolutely. RAM can be mismatched and combined in every way. However, 2x2GB will not be as fast as 1x4GB memory. That being said, it shouldn't really matter that much.


move a file, replacing existing (if any), ideally by putting existing in the trash

I need to do some more research to get this right.  I feel like its close, but applescript still doesn't like it.  Maybe it will give you some ideas until I get back here to give it another shot.  Btw this is going to be so much easier when you are using the choose file dialog.

heres my non-working (yet) attempt.  If you don't be me to it ill try to finish the solution tomorrow.

# 1. get desktop folder
set desktopFolder to (((path to desktop from user domain) as string)) as alias

# 2.set source file
tell application "Finder" to ¬
set theFile to ((path to file "1.text" of folder (desktopFolder)) as string) as   alias

# 3.set destination file
tell application "Finder" to ¬
set theDestination to ((path to file "2.text" of folder (desktopFolder)) as string) as alias

# 4.make it happen
tell application "Finder" to move theFile to theDestination with replacing


How can i get Facebook back if the app won't re-download?

The servers of Apple did not allow downloading the Facebook application for some (unknown) reason. It was probably a bug.

Downloading Facebook on the iPhone now works again (at least in France).


Ethernet LAN speed too slow on one machine

This problem has the feel of a data packet size mismatch causing fragmentation with corresponding delay. Possibly combined with the machine hardware for some reason being set up for half-duplex communication.
For more information about packet size you can use the ping command from terminal with different packet sizes as described in this article: https://community.hpe.com/t5/Networking/What-detail-symptoms-will-I-be-getting-if-MTU-size-mismatch/td-p/6909407
Compare the ping results between the fast and the slow computers on the same physical connection.


How to copy all conversation from iMessages to Mac without using Apple ID? Any app to do that?

Yes, there are apps such as BackupTrans, which will copy all messages from an iPhone to a Mac.  I have used that one with some success.  There are several others in the same price range.


Time machine external disk ejects before backup is complete

This sounds like the connection to the drive is not stable.
Try using another cable and changing ports on your Mac and on your external Drive if it has multiple ports.

If the problem persists the device is probably faulty and needs to be replaced/repaired.


How to remove the last character of a string if I know what the character is in AppleScript?

To have a portion of the string returned, the format would be:

set StringVariable2 to (characters n through n of StringVariable1) as string

n is the character number of the string starting at 1
as string is important or otherwise you get a list of single characters returned

Just make sure that whenever you parse any text, list or other item inside AppleScript to have text item delimiters at their default value (an empty list {}) unless you want to include those characters in the result as well.

In your example of removing the last character, it would be:

set StringVariable2 to (characters 1 through ((length of StringVariable1) - 1) of StringVariable1) as string


Copy new files only - is this possible? Basically want to merge two folders

This is a classic use case for rsync:

rsync -av /source-path/source-dir /destination-path

rsync will copy only new and changed files to the new location.

It is important to understand how a trailing slash on the source argument functions.  If there is a trailing slash then the contents of /source-path/source-dir will be copied to destination-path.  If there is no trailing slash then source-dir itself will be copied to the destination and its contents will be another level down in the destination hierarchy.

So if you want to replicate one path to another include the trailing slash as follows:

rsync -av /sourcepath/sourcedir/ /duplicatpath/sourcedir/


How do i cancel a purchase in the App Store?

Purchases are considered final.

However, the same has happened to me and I’ve found Apple to be quite forgiving if you explain the situation and ask nicely.

Contact iTunes Support and see if they will refund or credit you. Go to https://reportaproblem.apple.com in your browser, log in, locate the purchase and explain the situation.

Good luck!


Go into outlook (hotmail) calendar and push "share" then choose the option to send a View only Link.

Copy the "Import into other calendar applications (ICS)" link.

On your mac, go to Calendar and subscribe.

Write a name for your calendar and then enter the URL you copied from hotmail, substituting "http" for "webcals".

Chose how often you want it it to refresh, what alerts you want, then enter and the calendar from hotmail will appear on your Mac!


6 months or more of this problem...

my 2013 Mac was hanging when saving files, making outlook 2011 hang often! and slowing down workflows... and after reading this post it dawned on me...

before Mavericks I used 2 different tagging appx, TAGS and Leap. When installing mavericks, tags were quite well, though they became increasingly slow.

I I deleted both programs and amazingly and thankfully, For now at least, the hangs in Outlook and find have stopped, it feels like a new Machine. I can only hope its permanent.

Whilst on this topic I had a similar problem with my Mavericks finder a tad's. The centre of the Finder screen used to become transparent and you could not see the files. Drove me insane. Rebooting reinstalling wasting time. I do realise I had an older program called total Finder, Which is really good, installed before I use no bricks. After months of having this problem, then deleting that program, The problem is fixed.

Moral of the story, if you have installed an app to add functionality and apple then adds the functionality into osx, chances are the app will slow down a your mac.

Mental motor self and all reading ... uninstall apps of such nature.


How can I decline a call in iPhone when the screen was locked?

Push the power button on the top of the phone twice. The first time, the call is silenced. The 2nd time the call is rejected/directed to voice mail (if set up).


Can a Mac be set up to dial arbitrary numbers by connecting to an iPhone?

I use Google Voice's service to have my computer ring a third number and call my iPhone. Since I have most contacts in my Address Book and don't mind adding new ones - iCloud will get most contacts to the phone and Siri does a nice job dialing things, but there are also software packages that will literally dial your iPhone over a bluetooth connection.

Check out Dialectic for starters if you want a tool cut exactly for the job of dialing from OS X to iPhone remotely.


Is there a way to have clipboard buffering in OS X?

I would recommend something like Jumpcut:

  Jumpcut is an application that provides "clipboard buffering" — that is, access to text that you've cut or copied, even if you've subsequently cut or copied something else. The goal of Jumpcut's interface is to provide quick, natural, intuitive access to your clipboard's history.

Flycut is another option.

  Description: Flycut is a clean and simple clipboard manager for developers. It based on open source app called Jumpcut.


Software that directly backs up to Google Drive without caching？

Try Cyberduck. It supports "access your Google Drive without syncing to your computer".


Set environment variable for applications on startup

Solution

The solution uses two files: environment.plist and environment.conf.

environment.plist should be placed in ~/Library/LaunchAgents for a per user solution (recommended), or in /Library/LaunchAgents for a global solution (not recommended – potential security loophole).

environment.conf can be placed almost anywhere. $PATH_TO_ENVIRONMENT_CONF can be relative, but only to the 'default' environment variables, or any that are defined in a EnvironmentVariables key. 1

environment.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>local.launchd.environment</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>sh</string>
    <string>-c</string>
    <string>xargs -L 1 launchctl &lt; $PATH_TO_ENVIRONMENT_CONF</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

environment.conf:

setenv ATOM_HOME $HOME/.config/atom
setenv SOME_VAR "Use quotes if spaces are necessary"

How it works

When a user logs in, the LaunchAgents in ~/Library/LaunchAgents are executed. In this case, sh -c xargs -L 1 launchctl < $PATH_TO_ENVIRONMENT_CONF is executed. launchctl manages daemons and agents. In this case, we are using it to set an environment variable accessible to all applications and the shell.

xargs -L 1 launchctl &lt; $PATH_TO_ENVIRONMENT_CONF

xargs                     # xargs converts stdin to command line arguments
xargs -L 1                # Tells xargs to invoke launchctl for each line
           launchctl      # Run launchctl with the arguments
                     &lt; # Since a plist is an xml document, angle brackets must be escaped.

                     &lt; $PATH_TO_ENVIRONMENT_CONF
                          # This tells xargs to read input from the file at $PATH_TO_ENVIRONMENT_CONF

This solution can also be extended to other launchctl subcommands.


How to add new keystrokes to the system settings from Terminal

You can add an NSUserKeyEquivalents dictionary to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.plist.

defaults write -app preview NSUserKeyEquivalents '{
"Single Page" = "@1";
"Two Pages" = "@2";
"Continuous Scroll" = "@3";
"Adjust Size..." = "~@i";
"Adjust Color..." = "@u";
}'

The shortcuts for all applications are in ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist.

defaults write -g NSUserKeyEquivalents '{
"Show in Finder" = "$@r";
"Reveal" = "$@r";
"Delete Row" = "~@\b";
"Delete Rows" = "~@\b";
"Delete Column" = "$@\b";
"Delete Columns" = "$@\b";
"Minimize" = "\0";
"Minimize All" = "\0";
}'

The shortcut format is described in the Cocoa Text System article. The -app option doesn't work with some applications like Finder or Notes. If a menu item was assigned to nil, pressing L would trigger it in Audacity.


I had a similar problem. After waking my Macbook Pro from sleep, I found that space had magically diminished to just a few megabytes, even though I had several GB free before putting it to sleep. Deleting the sleepimage as suggested in the above post freed up the space again (the image had grown to about 4GB - pretty much the amount of space I was missing).


Adding gmail contacts in ichat for me.com account

If you create a me.com account in iChat, this will serve as an AIM account. If you want to add your Google Talk/Google+ friends with Gmail addresses, then you will have to add a Google account in iChat. This is very simple to do in Lion, simply go to iChat>Preferences, click on Accounts, and hit the small + button in the bottom left. Then you will be prompted to add new account information and just select the option from the popup box called Google Talk. Then all you need to do is enter your Google account information and you will now have all your Google friends in iChat.


Revert back to Mavericks from Yosemite Public Beta

There is no such thing as beta software without problems.

Restore your system from a Time Machine backup taken before you installed the beta OS release. This is possible by booting into the Recovery Partition.


How to import X.509 certificates into MacOS?

Keychain Access

You can import a wide range of certificate formats with macOS's Keychain application.

Open Applications > Utilities > Keychain Access.app
Select the menu item: File > Import Items…

Default Keychain

The imported items will appear in the current default keychain. If this is not what you want, be sure to change the default before importing.


iPhone 4 stuck in recovery mode after restore

Enter DFU and perform a DFU restore.

Connect the device to iTunes using USB.
Hold the Power and Home buttons until the display turns black.
Immediately release the power button but keep holding Home until iTunes displays a message that the device must be restored. The screen of the iPhone will remain black.
Use iTunes to restore the device.


How to partially uncover bullet points in Keynote

I figured out a way to do this. It isn't perfect. It's limited to being useful against solid colour backgrounds. If you're using a gradient background or a complex image this won't work.

Add a mask in the form of a rectangle over top of each bullet point. You don't need to be super precise. Just get the rectangle to cover all of the bullet point text. Do one rectangle for each bullet you want to reveal. I used an obvious colour in the screen show below so you could see what I mean.

Open the Inspector window and select actions. For each rectangle set the action to dissolve and set the triggers to be however you'd like (on each key press, one after the other, etc.).

Now change the rectangle fill colour to match your background and set the opacity level of each rectangle to be something dim. 80% or so should do it.

Now when you play the slide, each click will cause a rectangle to disappear revealing the text below it at its full brightness.

Here's a Keynote presentation that illustrates the concept for you to play with. And here it is in action:


When try to I open a .jar I get "The java JAR file could not be opened"

Those jar files are not executed by double-clicking. You have to place it in .minecraft/versions folder and run it from launcher I think.


I had the same problem (strangely, on the same day). My MacBook Pro would see and connect to the router but not be allowed past it, to the internet. Other devices had no such trouble, and resets of both the laptop and the router had no effect.

In my case, I had set a certain maximum number of DHCP clients on my router, and all the entries had been taken up. Raising this number by one allowed my MacBook to connect.


Yes, there are several:

ePub-quicklook @ github (free)
eBookQuickLook (free) (outdated)
EPUB QuickLook plugin (free)


macOS Catalina causing "find: .: Operation not permitted" errors

You need to grant the Finder full disk access:

Open Security & Privacy preferences
Go to the Full Disk Access option.
Click the plus button.
Locate the Finder in /System/Library/CoreServices/ (or simply type 'Finder' into Search).

Compare Grant “Full Disk Access” to Workflows run via the Services menu.


Cannot log into MAC OS X after rename the disk

You can't log into your account because the OS can't find your user directory.
You have to boot the computer keeping pressed command + R to enter the restoration/repair mode. Then go to the "Utilities" in the upper menu and enter "Terminal".

Type:
/usr/sbin/diskutil rename "oldname" "newname" where oldname is the name you assigned to the disk and newname should be "Macintosh HD".

If everything is OK you will receive a message informing that the disk was renamed and you can restart your computer and log into your account.


Dock throwing NSInvalidArgumentException trying to start

I got the same problem and fixed it by removing desktoppicture.db:

rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db

Then Dock started automatically.


You can try :

Disk Inventory X (free one)

DaisyDisk (paid one)


Why iTunes music can not play without Wi-Fi?

I traced the problem down to a TLS handshake and a total of 63 packets between the host and 23.211.148.217, which is init.iTunes.apple.com - that is executed when the current version of iTunes is started. Once this handshake completes, all is fine. But you must tunnel traffic to this host on startup, otherwise you get the error with each and every song change.

You can play music without wifi if you have an internet connection when you start iTunes. So, connect your laptop to the internet and do not turn it off/close iTunes, just put it to sleep. Then, the error will not appear. Not a fix, but it works.


How to configure Mac screen sharing to ONLY listen on localhost?

You have to execute this in Terminal:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.RemoteManagement.plist VNCOnlyLocalConnections -bool yes


You can simply uncheck the Checkbox next to the track.

  If unchecked, the song will never played!

Another Soultion:

Create just two different iTunes Librarys. One with Christmas songs, and another for the rest of the year. When it's christmas time, open iTunes and hold down the [alt]-key, to choose the other library!

There isn't any function to hide songs in iTunes. But you have great other options:

  Unselect the songs you don't want to hear
  Make a iTunes-Christmas-Library
  Create smart playlists


Will the Apple Watch function properly if worn on inside of wrist?

Today I wore my Apple Watch on the inside of my wrist while weight lifting. I tightened it one additional notch compared to how I normally wear it during daily activities. Otherwise I had noticed that it would often lose my heart rate, even on the top of my wrist. This usually happened when my arms were vertical and/or the particular exercise required me to twist my wrists.

I am happy to report my heart rate was detected without skipping a beat. The main downside is Activate On Wrist Raise is very finicky. I suppose that is to be expected since the Watch assumes it's being worn on the top of your wrist.

Possibly-relevant piece of information: I am Vietnamese with fairly light skin on the inside of my wrist. Your mileage may vary if you have darker skin.

Also note that I'm only verifying the proper function of the heart rate monitor. I haven't tested distance or step count estimates while wearing the device this way, although I don't see why that should affect those functions.

Edit: I tried again the following day and the Watch lost my pulse on occasion, on either side of my wrist, even when tightened as much as possible. I slid the Watch up my wrist a little and my pulse was detected correctly again. I think this is because when the Watch is too low, movements of your hand tug on the skin and make it harder to measure your blood flow.


How to get back all notes when Notes icon disappeared or the Notes.app got deleted

Have you attempted to go on the App Store and look for Notes by Apple? It will be there (the Notes app by Apple). If it just shows "Open" instead of (arrow pointing down from the Cloud), then you do have it on your iPhone, just hidden away "somewhere". You can use Spotlight to find it (drag down slightly below the top (not so high that you activate the Notification Center) and type in Notes.

As regards losing all your info by deleting an Apple default app - a friend of mine removed his Mail app on his iPhone by accident and panicked, thinking he had lost all his Mails, Mail settings etc.

He brought the iPhone in and I went to the AppStore, clicked download on the Mail app there (the correct one), and all the settings reappeared and everything was alright.

Tell us how you get on with this project and good luck!


Forward or Bcc a copy of all outgoing mail

Adding a Bcc ("Blind carbon copy") header to your outgoing mail causes your mail server to deliver the mail to the Bcc address, as well as the To and Cc (etc) as normal.
Mail.app can be made to add this header in a few different ways.  (The question mentions Rules, but I believe those only act on incoming mail.)
A. Enter an address into the Bcc text box at the top of the mail message
If necessary, use the context menu (shown below) to make the Bcc text box visible, and type an address into it.
Disadvantage here: the text box is empty every time you start a new message.

B. Turn on the "Automatically Bcc: myself" setting
This setting is at Mail > Preferences > Composing > "Automatically Bcc myself".

Disadvantage here: you can only Bcc your own address this way.
There is a workaround to this, though.  Turn on "Automatically Bcc myself", and set up a Rule (in Mail > Preferences > Rules) to forward all incoming messages from yourself (here, mark@example.com) to the other person (sam@example.com).  This will clog up your inbox with these copies of your sent mail, but you could also set the rule to delete them after performing the forwarding.
However!  This workaround seems a little flakey to me: eg, if I understand correctly, if you happen to email yourself (say, send yourself a reminder from your iPhone), then that message will be sent to the other person and then deleted.  So I wouldn't recommend it.
C. Set a Bcc value in Mail.app's defaults (hidden preference settings)
There is a hidden preference setting which causes Mail.app to automatically add a Bcc address to all outgoing mail.  This can be any address, not just your own.  But!  This setting can be quite confusing, for two reasons (at least: there may also be other subtleties here that I'm not aware of):

The automatically added address isn't visible in the Bcc text box.

The automatically added address overwrites anything you put into the Bcc text box (apparently: I haven't tested this detail).

If you want to try this, follow these instructions:

Quit Mail.app

Open Terminal.app (this is in /Applications/Utilities)

Type the following.  This creates a backup copy of Mail's preferences file (before we start meddling with it) on your Desktop.
 cp ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist ~/Desktop/

The location of this file changed in 10.7, I think - if you are using an older OS, you'll need to use ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist (I believe) instead.

Now add the preference setting by typing the following.  Substitute the address you actually want to use, but be sure to type the rest exactly as shown.
 defaults write com.apple.mail UserHeaders '{"Bcc" = "sam@example.com";}'

(Note: I found this defaults setting in a hint here).

Start Mail.app and test.

Here are some other commands that might be useful:

View the current setting:
  defaults read com.apple.mail UserHeaders

Remove the setting (be very careful to type this one exactly as shown):
  defaults delete com.apple.mail UserHeaders

Put the backup file you created earlier back into place, undoing any changes:
  cp ~/Desktop/com.apple.mail.plist ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences/


How do I copy text from another application without switching to it?

You can right-click the selected text and choose "Copy" from the menu that pops up. If you need to copy only a single word, you can just right-click the word without selecting it first, which works in both foreground and background apps.


Grey login screen after enabling encryption

Nope, you can’t. When FileVault is enabled, the disk needs to be decrypted on every boot. As the computer can’t access files on the disk, It generates a simple login screen so that you can enter your password and decrypt the disk. This UI is hardcoded into the firmware of your computer, and can’t be changed.
Source: https://discussions.apple.com/message/15823532#15823532

When your Mac first starts up, EFI-boot takes over to decide what to do. It either

continues to bring up the system to the typical OSX login screen, which is managed by OSX's system preferences, or

it starts a special EFI pre-boot where it displays the FV2 unlock screen with the icons of designated OSX accounts approved to unlock the disk. Once you log on, the EFI unlock sequence carries forth your credentials, performing a single signon.


"Remove personal information" default save in Office for Mac 2011?

The best way I can see of doing this is to modify or create a new blank template with the setting baked in.

File -> New From Template -> Blank
Document
Make Privacy changes as
before
Save as Word Template (This will normally appear under my Templates, but I presume you could overwrite the existing Blank template, wherever it is located).
Then when creating a new document, use the new template you created.

Jonathan


How about:

Type the following with empty space at the end into Terminal:

  sudo rm -rf

Drag the files you want to delete (from the trash) into the Terminal window and hit ender.
Enter your password. Done?

Disclaimer: Caution! The in this way deleted files are deleted forcefully and cannot be back easily. But I think you want exactly that...


Is there a way to control USB audio device settings from the iPad?

iOS allows the currently frontmost app to control the audio session and to configure the audio input for its use.  So you would have to look in each app to see if it has any settings for audio while it is running.

There is an API for an app to request an input sample rate.  However there currently appears to be no public API for an app to set the hardware audio input gain.


iPhone 7 never shows "LTE" even on LTE network

Most carriers support LTE on just about any modern smartphone, including iPhones going back to the iPhone 5. Indeed, Three rolled out LTE back in 2014.

Your friend is correct that 4G (HSPA+) is not the same as LTE. In general, LTE has shorter range but enables significantly faster data speeds than plain old 4G (hence its name, Long Term Evolution).

To enable LTE, go to Settings -> Cellular Data Options -> Enable LTE and choose either Data Only or Voice and Data.

More information:

Manually Enabling LTE on iPhone (cult of mac)
Difference Between 4G and LTE (nyt gadgetwise)
Picture Evidence of 3 LTE (three support)

Edit: Based on OP's evidence, it seems that on 3 UK, LTE is referred to as 4G, so indeed the status bar will never show "LTE", just "4G", even while on a 4G-LTE network. As long as the speeds hold up to LTE-quality, you're probably getting LTE. This is likely a regional difference, determined by the language on your phone.


Is there a way for Spotlight or Launchbar or Quicksilver or similar to just return matching folders not files?

The fastest way using spotlight is to add kind:folder to the search term in the spotlight field.

You can use booleans, metadata tags like kind:music or date:yesterday and more as described in Specifying criteria in the Spotlight search field

I always forget about these and instead use the search window to build up a boolean criteria rather than use the default spotlight menu search (where all the other data detectors compete to provide you relevant matches)

Instead of command+space try option+command+space

Then click the circle + on the right by Save and override the "Any" with "Folder"

I don't know a way to automate or save this further as the default, but it's a way that will work on all Macs.


No there is nothing built in

Roxio Toast has a data disc spanning feature, for large files it will split to fit, or you can opt not to split files for easier recovery.

Another solution would be to use an archiving (read:compression) utility that will allow you to compress to multiple archives of a fixed size, say 4.7Gb, the down side of which is that you will lose everything if one disc is unreadable


Can I watch the WWDC from the beginning when the event has not finished?

UPDATE: The stream is officially posted in a replayable state, just like any other online video, located here. It's also the latest entry in Apple's "Apple Keynotes" podcast, available for download on iTunes and iDevices here.

Since no one seems to have given the answer iProgram was hoping for, I might as well make this a proper answer in case other people have the same question.

Under the circumstances, live blogs can be a tolerable substitute for watching the stream. (Source: Experience when Apple events happened during school hours.) I personally recommend the ones at Macworld and iMore, but there are countless others that you can find online if you search for them.

Good luck, and enjoy the keynote, however you end up experiencing it!


From the command line you could use

sudo installer -pkg /tmp/mypackage.pkg -target /

I assume you can incorporate this into your python application.


How to keep 2017 Macbook Pro / Mojave from slowing down when not on A/C power?

It looks like the specific issue that I was having in iTerm is solved by an option in the iTerm preferences to not use the GPU renderer when on battery. It can be manually turned off.


I have seen the exact same issue, just happened again this week, Disk Utility sees an issue in that file (and a file copy isn't able to complete once it's in that state) but Disk Utility isn't able to repair (even when Mac booted to Repair mode), only fix I've seen is to kill/restore the PVM, I also do a reformat of the SSD but don't think it's necessary.

My guess is that it's an edgecase Mac filesystem bug exposed through how Parallels does PVM, perhaps related to Win10 disk mgmt that does interesting things under the covers (defrag etc. is now all hidden and happens behind the scenes).

Similar specs (Parallels 14.1.2, Win10, Mojave (currently 10.14.3), also 500G 16GB Macbook Pro Retina 15 but mine is a late 2013.


Sierra meets El Capitan OS installation issue

Boot into Recovery Mode with Cmd-R
Once the "maOS Utilities" screen comes up, access Terminal from the Utilities menu in the menu bar
Delete unnecessary (or backuped) files/folders

(Soure: About macOS Recovery)


Photos imported via webinterface cannot be edited on iOS devices

I can confirm that this is not a blanket restriction and I have uploaded some images via iCloud (tested a PC / Windows 10 and macOS Catalina) web app.

I would upload an image that isn’t already in your library as a duplicate as I believe the system is trying to match duplicates.

Once that’s done, you will likely need to wait out whatever processing is stuck on your specific library or engage Apple support since they would need to look server side to investigate why specific images are stuck.

Expect to spend at least 30 minutes on the phone with Apple to collect information and/or try the “FAQ” steps and eventually if there isn’t a workaround or quick fix, you’ll be asked to make a support PIN to engineering or higher tier iCloud support can look at your specific sync data.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202650


I believe you are misunderstanding how My Photo Stream works. It is intended as a temporary (up to 30 days or 1000 photos at any given time) mechanism to allow each photo you take to sync to each of your devices - iOS, Mac and Windows. There is also a limit of 1000 photos in My Photo Stream at any given time. As new photos are uploaded, older ones are deleted.

"Why is not everything backed up": If you have more than 1000 photos in your Camera Roll, the oldest X (greater than 1000) photos will no longer appear in My Photo Stream. Similarly, photos older than 30 days will be removed. Again, My Photo Stream is not a backup service. This could explain storage size discrepancies, as could the fact that videos are not uploaded to My Photo Stream.

"Why are photos in iCloud taking up space on my phone": My Photo Stream stores a copy of each photo that is in the stream on your device. Generally speaking, an identical photo that is in multiple places should only take up space once on your device - if the same 100KB photo is in Camera Roll and My Photo Stream, there are two pointers to the same 100KB file on the device, instead of having two files that are 100KB each. That said, the storage is not freed up until all pointers are removed from the device. If you delete a 100KB photo from Camera Roll, but it still exists in Photo Stream, that 100KB will still be used.

Also, if you have started or joined any shared Photo Streams, that will take up space as well.


Understanding iPhone Provisioning Portal and how it works?

I faced the same problem too when I started out.

For my first app, the steps at Provisioning unveiled worked perfectly for me.

The next thing you could try out is distributing your app wirelessly (along with the provisioning profile), which gets very exciting :)


Apple Trackpad Causing Long Keypress Events

I have the same issue - still not managed to find a fix - I only noticed by chance when the keyboard issue went away if I disconnected the magic trackpad.


My understanding is that when Apple is saying that a high DPI display is officially supported, they are implying that HiDPI mode  is supported.   See, for example, that in the article officially stating support for certain 4K displays for your Mac, they show a screenshot and state that you should be able to adjust scaling:

E.g., the Dell monitor cited in the article is quite a high pixel density since it shows 4K in a 24 inch diagonal.  Running it without HiDPI would be quite challenging for most users.


External Hard Drive - Get Write Access Rights

A common cause of this would be the external drive being formatted in NTFS.

If your external hard drive is NTFS formatted (a common Windows format), MacOS X can only mount it read-only. There are third-party add-ons that would allow a Mac to write to a NTFS, but out of the box, Macs can read but not write to this format.


Edit (colorized) terminal output before printing?

Before starting your session, run the command bash | tee stdout.rtf. This starts a new bash session, recording the output in a file stdout.rtf. Now, simply edit stdout.rtf and print.


I can't speak for Apple, but this is likely an intentional decision to walk away from the server side / api calls for the older version of the WWDC app.

One of the core messages for iOS 11 is that all 32 bit platforms and apps are done for developers, and Apple making a hard stop of functionality (programming in a message telling you your app is too old). Programming in a kill switch could be seen as reinforcing that experience for developers.

The temporary good news is despite this move, you can still watch WWDC 2017 content on iOS 9 in Safari. The news on 64 bit only requirements was covered in the Platforms State of the Union keynote (2017 session 102) I believe.


Can the Java SDK pop-up be disabled entirely?

There is a stub app inside:

/System/Library/Java/Support/CoreDeploy.bundle

that shows the prompt to download Java.  I believe you can rename CoreDeploy.bundle to stop the Java install prompts.  Note that it's generally a bad idea to modify anything in /System and OS updates may undo anything you change there.

To test the prompt, in Terminal type

java -version

If you don't have JRE/JDK installed, you should be prompted.  After you rename the file, try again and the prompt should not appear.


Have Siri tell me when something is ready

As of right now SIRI can only be initiated by you. You can tell SIRI to remind you about something and you will get a notification about it but there is now way to have SIRI come on and say anything.


Is there a quick way to relink my homebrew kegs?

This bash command (taken from there) will unlink all installed formulas and then link them again:

brew list -1 | while read line; do brew unlink $line; brew link $line; done

I guess all formulas need to be linked, otherwise, whichever tool depends on them, won't be able to find them..


Manually start Time Machine backup without menu bar icon

If you'd prefer not to have or use Time Machine from its icon on the menu bar, it can be started/stopped, and more, via Terminal, e.g.:

tmutil startbackup

Or:

tmutil stopbackup

The startbackup verb also can take options, i.e:

tmutil startbackup [-a | --auto] [-b | --block] [-r | --rotation] [-d | --destination dest_id]

Have a look at its manual page: man tmutil


Where is the mount point and format of the iOS memory when it is plugged in a mac?

the iPhone does not present itself to any computer as a block device, so you won't be able to mount it and access the file system. This is among other things a security feature. Depending on what you are trying to change, you might be able to use iTunes for manually uploading music, playlists and I think possibly videos as well. Additionally you can use iTunes to upload files to any apps that allow it.

If you jailbreak your phone, you get full file system access at which point you can install an ssh daemon and ssh into your phone.


How can I copy the OS X system image from primary HDD to new SSD?

I would try to open the enclosure of your external USB drive and replace it with the SSD to clone your data.
Simple hard drive cloning using Carbon Copy Cloner

Format the target drive with Disk Utiliy.app to Mac OS Extendend (Journaled) using the option Erase. This erases the drive and creates one partition across the entire disk.

Download and install Carbon Copy Cloner.
BTW: Developers need to eat! Therefore, I suggest making a small donation to Mike Bombich via Paypal.

In CCC configure Source Disk: Macintosh HD and Target Disk: your_formatted_disk. For cloning options choose Backup everything in order to make the target bootable. The time for cloning varies. It took me 105min to clone a 250GB Hitachi to a 500GB Seagate.

Swap the hard drives and boot into your new hard drive. Repair your disk using Disk Utility.

Source: credit to Mark West @ mac101.net


Earphones problem/ sleep mode/ MacBook Air

download NoSleep for mac, makes it so that your display doesn't sleep when you close the lid.


Commands in *nix terminals are stored in various directories throughout the filesystem. The PATH variable is a series of colon (:) sperated directories that are searched in order to find a desire command. When a command is called, the PATH variable is read, and all the paths is contains are checked for the command in question.
You have 2 ways to make your program run without specifying location: either add it to a directory that's already to your PATH variable, or add its containing folder to the PATH variable.
You can read your current PATH variable by running:
echo $PATH
And you can edit your PATH variable by following a guide such as this one
P.S. I REALLY strongly discourage keeping files directly within ~/


Unlock with Apple Watch on Sierra not working

Uncheck "Unlock with Watch" box in System Preferences.

Then hold down both buttons on your watch until the Apple logo shows, then release. This will reset your device (no data or app loss).

Let your watch re-start.

Unlock the watch.

Then, back on your Mac, re-check "Unlock with Watch."


Unfortunately, it appears that ffmpeg can't record using the iSight, as reported in a ffmpeg-users thread.

Really a shame that Apple doesn't expose this functionality!


Yes you can with this experimental feature.
Open chrome://flags/#enable-native-notifications to enable the feature, then restart Chrome.


Streaming vs. downloading podcasts on iPhone

In both cases, you need to download the same number of bytes, but streaming takes them at a much slower rate, thus using less bandwidth (which is measured in terms of data divided by time).

When streaming a podcast, you need to download a minute's worth of audio every minute, plus slightly more for buffering.

Given that it doesn't take an hour to download an hour long podcast, you are getting far more data per minute when downloading than you are when streaming.

To put it differently, if you're streaming an hour-long podcast, you are guaranteed to be transferring only that one podcast over the network during the next hour -- and if you stop and move on to something else, you stop downloading that podcast.

If you're downloading an hour-long podcast, you might download several of them during a one hour period, putting much higher demand on the network.


If your buying a used iPod Touch whoever sold it to you will probably (and should) reset the device.   If its not or you just want to reset it you can do it by going into Settings > General > Reset > Erase all Content and Settings