Shrinking a Core Storage volume without the booter partition

I followed David Anderson's advice and discovered that the partition (as described by GPT) is 3584 bytes (7 LBA blocks) larger than the Core Storage Physical Volume. Using this information, I did manage to shrink the volume to add a second partition.
The process is, however, quite scary: it involves a kernel panic, then some more cryptic, unhelpful, unfixable diskutil errors, and then yet some more frightening failures.
And so let this be an anti-answer:

if you are dealing with an Apple-designed filesystem (such as HFS and APFS),
and you don't have professional knowledge of the inner workings of them,
and you find your volume in an inconsistent state — it should be considered inconsistent as soon as Disk Utility starts complaining —
and yet the volume is somehow still usable (you can see your files and such):

Then, for the love of your data and your well-being, instead of trying to fix the problem by meddling with the volume header or partition table (like I did),
Just move everything out and reformat.

I eventually lost no data. Here is my process. I hope that people more knowledgeable than me could point out all the mistakes I made.
Note: 1 block is 512 bytes.

(First, I made a copy of the first 512 bytes of the partition, which contains the Volume Header, using dd).

Using the gpt command, I learned that my second GPT partition (the main partition) has a size of 27344355255 blocks; following this specification of Core Storage (which is the abstraction layer that allows HFS encryption), I examined the partition volume header and learned that the Core Storage Physical Volume only occupies 27344355248 blocks. This means there was an extra space of 7 blocks.

I then decided to free these 7 blocks by recreating the GPT table (using the gpt command), also marking the type of the new partition as Apple Boot.

I attempted to create an HFS+ volume on the new partition using diskutil. This is not possible because an HFS+ volume requires a minimum of 512 KB.

With the unformatted Apple Boot partition, I made the risky move of asking Disk Utility to resize the 14 TB partition. This time, Disk Utility did not complain about missing booters. However, before the resizing had finished, a kernel panic struck.

After restarting, diskutil reported that the original 14 TB partition is now 12 TB, still intact. The 7-block Apple Boot partition now occupied the remaining 2 TB free space, still unformatted.

Then, I modified the GPT table again, this time adding a 262144-block Apple Boot partition after the now 12 TB partition, and another Core Storage partition taking up the remaining space.

At this point, both the 12 TB and 2 TB partition is showing up in Disk Utility. Upon reformatting the 2 TB partition as a JHFS+ encrypted volume (so that it too has a booter), both partitions can be resized freely using Disk Utility with no errors.

The only caveat was that using First Aid (diskutil verifyVolume) on the 12 TB volume now persistently reported the error "Incorrect size for volume" (right after it says the volume "appears to be OK", too). This could not be fixed using any diskutil command. But despite the error, the two volumes can still be resized and normally mounted.

At this point, it would seem that my original question has been solved, to a large extent.

This is what the partition scheme now looked like:
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *14.0 TB    disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage - Main Partition -      12.0 TB    disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk2s3
   4:          Apple_CoreStorage Time Machine            2.0 TB     disk2s4
   5:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk2s5

(The rest of this is me not knowing what I am doing.)

After this, I came up with the hypothesis that the "Incorrect volume size" error that Disk Utility kept complaining about was about the Logical Volume, and not the Physical Volume.

Core Storage has many abstraction layers, the order of which is Physical Volume → Logical Volume Group → Logical Volume Family → Logical Volume.
If I am understanding it correctly, PV is the closest to the GPT partition, LVF is where FileVault encryption occurs, and LV is the volume that users can see.

To test this out, I deleted the 2 TB partition via Disk Utility. There was no issue. The hard drive now contained EFI, the 14 TB partition, and the 134.2 MB booter.

I attempted to use diskutil cs resizeVolume to resize only the Logical Volume back to 12 TB, and not the Physical Volume. The resizing could not proceed because of the "Incorrect volume size" error. (The same went for diskutil cs resizeStack).

Then I had the horrible idea to revert not only the GPT table, but also the Core Storage volume header, to the state when this question was posted.

This is in the hope that diskutil verifyVolume will then auto-adjust the volume size, and then I can start over the process, but resize the Logical Volume first.
I made a backup of the current volume header, then dd rewrote the first 512 bytes of the volume using the backup .img file I made of the header at the start of this answer.
After I did that, the 14 TB volume once again was unmountable. All diskutil operations would fail at this point.

I attempted to revert this change by writing the 512-byte volume header back. Then, another kernel panic occurred.

This time, things got much more serious. For the next few hours, every time I connected the hard drive to my laptop, macOS immediately kernel panicked — whether it was in normal mode, Recovery, Safe Mode, or Single User Mode.

I tried booting into Ubuntu from USB, and examine and manipulate the Volume Header from there, to no avail.

I almost lost hope, when I remembered that, back when the partition first failed, I ran dd through the first few GBs of the partition and saved it as an image, which was since deleted. I recovered it using Disk Drill, and after painfully comparing hex dumps, I decided to copy the first 62500 blocks (32 MB) of the image file back to the partition.

My idea was that this would cause macOS to recognize the volume in the same way that it recognized the original 14 TB volume when it first failed, and then if I redo the steps I described in the question (recreating the GPT table), I could get the volume back a second time, and I thought that the worst that could happen is I would lose all file changes since the partition first failed.

Shockingly, not only did this recover the partition, but all the files that were on the hard drive before I broke the partition the second time are still there.

Now I am in the process of backing up everything so that I can start the hard drive fresh.

To reiterate: when in the slightest doubt, backup!


Clean Install El Capitan in Macbook without any other Mac

The short answer is no. Without a different Mac you cannot download an El Capitan installer without first installing Yosemite on your Mac.

One way to do a clean install of El Capitan when only having one Mac and a Yosemite recovery partition is this:

Install Yosemite using the recovery partition.
Go to the App Store and download El Capitan.
Use createinstallmedia to create a USB installation of El Capitan.
Then you can use that usb media to format and do a clean install of your Mac.

Optionally you could skip the usb installation steps all together and install El Capitan, let it upgrade the recovery partition for you and use the fresh recovery partition to format and reinstall El Capitan as a freshly installed OS.

Instructions on how to use createinstallmedia can be found here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

As a side note, have you tried if Internet recovery has a different version of the system compared to your local harddrive recovery. Hold Option-Command-R to start up from OS X Internet Recovery. As found here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314


How can I tell when it's a good time to buy a MacBook Pro?

See the comments to improve the question, but Macrumors' buyers' guide always has suggestions if now is a good time to buy.


It's possible to use a Mac invited account with firmware password enabled?

Firmware password prevents the startup of any disk other than the designated startup disk, so it should not prevent startup of guest or other accounts.As long as the account is using your startup disk, it should not ask for the firmware password.

However, if you have file vault enabled, guest accounts can only access Safari, and the network connection. File vault encrypts the hard drive (SSD), preventing the guest from accessing it. If file vault is off, guest accounts function like a normal account with limited permissions.


An inert "sensor" would be white paper.
An actually working sensor could be paper coated with cobalt(II) chloride, whose hexa hydrate (cobalt chloride "containing" water) turns light red.
If you want to tamper with the original sensor, think of water free clear coat.


Set service keyboard shortcut and have change take effect programtically

The changes made by the AppleScript are applied for me after I quit and reopen applications. Same for this command:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Delete NSServicesStatus:"(null) - VimAnywhere - runWorkflowAsService"' ~/Library/Preferences/pbs.plist 2>/dev/null;defaults write pbs NSServicesStatus -dict-add '"(null) - VimAnywhere - runWorkflowAsService"' '{key_equivalent = "~@v";}'

I don't know any way to apply the changes without reopening applications. Running /System/Library/CoreServices/pbs -flush or terminating pbs doesn't seem to work.


How do I set up Apple Mail to show me e-mail priority?

My recommendation is to use Apple Mail's rules to customize how you want these displayed—you can make them stand out even more than a simple !! in the message list by setting up a Rule in Preferences:

In this case, specify that you want to apply the rule to messages with high priority. Then choose the formatting that you want. I chose to list messages with a red background. When new messages arrive with a high priority, they got a red background in the message list.


You can avoid the problem at compile by dynamically choosing the apps in system events.

tell application "System Events"
    set App1 to (first process whose name is "App")
    tell App1
        set frontmost to true
        set position of window 1 to {8, 22}
    end tell
end tell

Then do the same for App2.


How to navigate a lot of tabs in Google Chrome on iOS (iPad)

In the most recent version of Google Chrome (currently on version 55.0.2883.79) has actually gone a long way to resolving this problem. There is now a Windows-like button to the right of the tabs (and the new tab button) that now displays a scrolling page of tab thumbnails.

Tapping that button results in a page of thumbnails representing the open tabs (you can swipe left/right to show Incognito Tabs and other devices that you are logged in to). However, the first few times I did this, only a few of the tabs were represented by thumbnails. It either took a bit of time or some navigating between the tabs for the remaining thumbnails to display...

I had amassed in excess of 111 tabs (rough count of 37 lines of 3 tabs)! Some tabs were seriously old! Chrome itself worked perfectly OK with this number of tabs (I think the tabs just go to sleep as navigating back to them triggers a full reload), but scrolling through this long list of thumbnails the first time was a bit jerky on an iPad Air 2.


Copy and paste between Mac and headless linux VM

If you SSH into the Redhat VM you'll be able to copy and paste the commands into your terminal window. Simple open terminal and type:

ssh yourRedhatUser@redhatIPaddress


How to ensure Time-Machine can rollback to a specific-date backup? (not deleting it)

There is no way of marking a TM snapshot as being particularly important.

However, as long as the TM disk isn't full, then TM should not normally delete the snapshot that accounts for a complete OS change. (Assuming that you had the old OS on your disk for more than 1 month.)

TM will start deleting the oldest snapshots if the drive is full, to make space for the newest ones.

If you want to make absolutely certain, you would do well to use an app like SuperDuper! or CarbonCopyCloner to make a clone disk image, which you can restore at a later time. (But you needed to do this before upgrading.)

Bear in mind that when you roll the whole disk back, you will lose any changes to your data made since the rollback date. IMAP servers will handle changes to email, but documents and other files will need to be restored by other means.


Beryllium virus detected on bootcamp partition, cannot resolve

The pagefile.sys file is used by Windows as virtual memory. Basically, Avast running under macOS is giving you a false positive and thus can be ignored. I tested this by performing a clean install of Windows 10 (20H2) in a VMware Fusion Player (12.1.1) virtual machine. Next, I installed Avast and found no malware. However, I wanted Avast to scan pagefile.sys for viruses. Below is the procedure I used.

I restarting Windows to boot to the Windows Recovery Environment. Basically, I held down the shift key while restarting Windows.

I navigated to a Windows Command Prompt window.

I entered the following commands. Basically, I wanted a copy of pagefile.sys.
c:
attrib -h -s pagefile.sys
copy pagefile.sys pagefile.bin
attrib +h +s pagefile.sys
exit

I booted back to Windows.

Using the File Explorer, I selected to run a scan on pagefile.bin, as shown below. For a better view, click on the image or open the image in a new window.

The result is shown below.

So Avast under Windows is ignoring the pagefile.sys file, but does not under macOS. Being this test was made from a clean install of Windows, I assume this found malware threat is a false positive and can therefore be ignored.


`Do you want the application "main" to accept incoming network connections?` pop up while running Go applications

You can avoid this pop-up when running local tests if you specify the host portion of the address that will be listened to to be "localhost" or "127.0.0.1". Many programs let you set the address through the command line or an environment variable and many of those programs will default to passing no host to the listen command. With no host specified, Go will listen on 0.0.0.0 and macOS will want to warn you about that. When Go opens ports on the localhost, macOS doesn't warn - at least not in my cases.


How to copy a file and replace (if necessary) in the target directory from terminal

First things first, -R is used for recursive copying, which won't do anything for a single file.

cp default behavior is to overwrite the existing file.

cp test.txt ~/Library/Folder\ 1/Folder\ 2/

The backslash is used to stop the string being split on the spaces.


Here come in depth solution that fixed same problem that I had, and maybe it will help you and others. First off all there is no magic wand solution for this, but I spend 3 days to fix it, and now it working 2 days with no freezing..

I have:
Mac (27-inch, Mid 2011), OS X Yosemite Public (installed from Maverick)...

Every 1-2 hours my Mac freezes, sometimes in PS, DropBox, Chrome, Creative Cloud... etc.. and I need to hard reset every time... also if I start doing "normal" reset or shutdown (if my mac is not in freezing mode), sometimes it only hangs with black screen and mouse working...

I tried:
- cleaning PRAM
- fix permission
- delete applications that sometimes craches
- remove logitech keyboard & mouse
- work only with safari, not chrome
- and nothing happens

Long story short...
- Boot you Mac in Safe mode, first.. it will take some time, and than start normal Yosmeite
- Then reset or shutdown, it needs to turn off really fast (30 sec max)...
- Than boot again only with Disc Utility (Command+R to boot into Recovery, or hold down OPTION), you cannot do this from Yosemite...
- Than Verify for errors, and fix those errors (approx. 2-3 hours of waiting)
- Again fix permisions..
- Yosemeith is working now, and don't freeze anymore...

Bottom line: Mac is really problematic with file handling, and if you had Maverick with lot's of install/uninstall applications, than Yosemite is even worse, so Fix disk errors, and everything will be ok...

Hope you will fix it this way..


Automatic lock screen does not work in EL Capitan

I can report the problem seems to have resolved 'naturally' after a reboot.  It is unclear why though.


OSX increase display font size without changing display resolution?

There's no simple way to enlarge text across the board and not also affect the scaling. Worse, if you change the size without the app or system knowing, menus and labels will collide and clip. Smart apps know that you have 5k resolution and that the UI is scaled up and still draw fonts and lines crisply so the down side to reducing “resolution” is mitigated and in some cases eliminated letting you use resolution as a proxy for default font size.

Apple glosses over this distinction in the technical details behind this in the user guide, but adjusted the resolution of your primary display is the biggest lever you have to manage text size globally.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/

  Set the resolution for your primary display
  1. On your Mac, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Displays, then click Display.
  2. Select Scaled, then select one of the options.

Next once you are happy with the size of the UI (dock / menu bar, etc...) and observe that other elements like lines, fonts, gradients are rendered with higher fidelity than the “resolution” allows, then go to the Accessability features to set system wide zoom and hover text. These further boost apps that aren’t on board with taking hints from the resolution and to convince yourself of quality of the rendering.

https://www.apple.com/accessibility/mac/vision/

Lastly, you might want or need to make changes on an app by app basis for apps that don’t follow Apple’s system wide visibility and font sizing controls. As mentioned in the comments - the raw resolution never changes and the controls "hint" at what factor and detail to draw major aspects. Some apps respect this well, others you will need to use the zoom controls and hope they persist your adjustments across documents and when you quit those apps.

Safari uses zoom well and persists it per tab/window well.
Terminal app also uses zoom well and persists it per tab/window/shell well.

In addition to app specific zooming, Accessibility has a system zoom that is very responsive and powerful if you need to keep all the UI super detailed / small and zoom in on areas from time to time or semi-permanently to get larger view on apps that don't scale well to full retina resolution.


What exactly happened with Apple throttling iPhones?

Some say throttling.
Others say the system stays running until you can have the battery serviced.
You are right. Lots of opinions and people taking action without learning the physics and basics. If Apple had been more open what was happening sooner, the lawsuit might not have succeeded to reach class-action status, but laws can be horribly flawed (slavery, death sentences, chopping off fingers or hands for instance). In the US pretty much anyone can sue and sometimes settling is smart to avoid risk of an adverse finding and not an admission or merit or guilt.


How to deal with non-working key on the keyboard?

As suggested in the comments and in this post, using Karabiner app should work with the following configuration of private.xml file (edit in Misc tab):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>Use § to type R</name>
    <identifier>private.replace_r_key</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::DANISH_DOLLAR, KeyCode::R</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

and enable newly created item after reloading the file in Change Key tab.

To find out the right key code, use EventViewer in Misc tab.


Prevent OS X from switching my keyboard layout when password fields are focused

Put the .keylayout in /Library/Keyboard Layouts/ instead of ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts/.


How to access a clicked URL in a URL handler application created in Automator

The way URL opening in Mac OS X is actually more complicated than you would think. When you click a URL, Mac OS X does not just pass the browser the URL to open; instead, it sends it an Apple Event, with the ID kAEGetURL, containing the URL.

I never really used Automator (it's just way too slow and limited for my typical use), so I'm not sure about this, but I doubt it has the ability to handle Apple Events. Therefore you won't be able to use Automator to achieve what you want.

You'll therefore have to resort to a normal Objective-C app in Xcode.

The two basic things you need to do are:

register your app for receiving the kAEGetURL event, and set the CFBundleURLTypes in your app's Info.plist to include http and https.
Implement a method handling the kAEGetURL event, and make it copy the URL to the clipboard.

These two things are relatively straightforward to do in Objective-C; to illustrate, I've created a sample application that does this. You can view it at https://github.com/houbysoft/short/tree/master/Copy%20URL%20to%20Clipboard. The most important file is https://github.com/houbysoft/short/blob/master/Copy%20URL%20to%20Clipboard/Copy%20URL%20to%20Clipboard/AppDelegate.m, there you can see how to register for the event (this is done in the applicationWillFinishLaunching: method) and how to copy it to the clipboard (this is done in the getUrl:withReplyEvent: method).

If you're feeling lazy and just want to see that this works, grab this file, extract the application from it, set that as the default web browser (open Safari Preferences, and browse for that app in the Default web browser field). Then click on your link in Skype, and it should be copied straight to your clipboard.


Install pyqt via homebrew with `--with-python3` but still goes to Python 2

You are right. The formula does hardcode the python version. I have worked on an updated version, and it should be available tonight.

Also, it is safe to change the path directly in the source. However, being a git repository it will complain if you have uncommitted changes when you want to update. Your best bet would be to just wait until tonight or tomorrow morning.


My MacBook Pro touch bar 13" isn't starting

I used to have the same problem with my MBP. Just brought it to the appleStore in Oberhausen(Germany) it was a hardware trouble which could be fixed within 2 hours.

I didn’t need to pay for that. So if you want to get a quick solution you should go to the appleStore or a reseller.  It could be a bad cable, bad power adapter or something internal needing replacement or reseating a cable.

Hope that this helped you.


The necessity for this is very limited. Here's the situation it will help with:

You don't have a working Recovery partition.
You have a bootable drive that boots to the Finder.
You don't want to—or can't—simply install a fresh copy of macOS onto your drive and restore from there.
You have a complete Time Machine backup (from which you did not exclude system files).
That Time Machine backup does not come with its own Recovery partition, as with a Time Capsule.

In order to do a Time Machine system restore on a drive without a (working) Recovery partition without installing macOS first, follow the following steps:

Obtain a macOS installer. You can download one from Apple's support site, but that didn't work for me. I was able to make this work with the version of El Capitan that's downloadable from the App Store.
Get access to a recovery partition. There are a few options:

2.1 Attempt to install macOS onto your computer. After it reboots, don't continue the installation; instead, restart into your bootable drive (TechTool eDrive, USB key, whatever you have).

2.2. Alternately, use Recovery Partition Creator (MacWorld has instructions).

2.3. Lifewire has another method. I've discovered that you can run Disk Utility 13 (that has the option of the Debug menu mentioned in the Lifewire article) in El Capitan if you hack it first.
If one of these options results in a working recovery partition, great! Boot into it and use that (in my experience option 2.1 will boot, but will not allow you to restore from Time Machine—at least in El Capitan). If not, continue to the next step.
Open the recovery partition. You can use the Debug menu in Disk Utility 13 or earlier (instructions in the Lifewire article above) to select and then mount it, or mount a disk image of the partition.
Use Tinkertool or some other method to show hidden files in the Finder.
On the Recovery HD (that you should have mounted on your desktop in Step 4) there is a folder called "com.apple.recovery.boot." In it is a hidden disk image named "BaseSystem.dmg." Mount that (I had to hit Command-O for some reason; double-clicking did not do the job).
A disk image called "OS X Base System" will appear on your desktop.
Launch Terminal.
Paste the following command, hit Return, then input your password when prompted: sudo -b /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Installation/CDIS/Time\ Machine\ System\ Restore.app/Contents/MacOS/Time\ Machine\ System\ Restore (The reason for this is that Time Machine System Restore must be launched as root in order for it to properly restore your permissions.)
Follow the instructions to restore your system from your Time Machine backup!


I had to reinstall macOS using a USB stick. Probably the recovery partition data was corrupted and my WiFi network wasn't compatible at all for some reason.


How to cd to a directory with a name starting with a "-" (minus)?

This should just work:

cd /path/to/-folderthatstartswithdash

EDIT:

According to this question, this works if you only want to input the name:

cd -- -folderthatstartswithdash


Connecting 2017 MBP with DisplayPort Cinema Display

Yes
The current 2017 13" MacBook Pro page at Apple.com says it includes:

Four Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports with support for:
Charging
DisplayPort
Thunderbolt (up to 40 Gbps)
USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10 Gbps)

So you should be able to plug in a video cable to drive a Cinema Display that uses DisplayPort.
Adapter: USB-C to Mini DisplayPort
The missing piece is a USB-C to Mini DisplayPort adapter. I do not see any for sale on Apple.com. I do see several available at Amazon.com costing around USD $ 20-40.
Be aware that you need a Mini DisplayPort not a full-size DisplayPort.


Found it! It's no where to be found in recent versions of OsiriX. I had to go back to OsiriX 4.0. Works beautifully though, however you need QT7 to open the files.


Mac Pro 10.7 - aftermarket dvd drive hangs on restart

Master / Slave?

This is in the top bay?  And nothing is in the bottom?  There is probably a jumper to choose Master or Slave for the drive.  If it is the only one, it should be Master.


Unable to partition internal disk on El Capitan

Did you ever create hard links in the terminal? Sounds like you need to delete them properly.

If that doesn't work you may need something like DiskWarrior to repair your drive.

If all that fails, backup your hard drive, re-initialize and re-partition.

Good luck!


Can't Open google.com even though there is internet

I had the same issue. I could not access Google to do an internet search. It worked fine for years, suddenly one day Google wouldn't open.
Solution: click on Finder, then click on Downloads.
You will find a list of downloads by date, with the most recent on top.
In the past, I clicked on links containing pdf files they would download when I read them. One of those files is causing the problem. It contains some kind of virus. Find the files around the date when the problem initiated and move them to the trash. In fact, move any files that you don't recognize to the trash and then empty the trash.
Problem solved. Google will open.


How can I enable keyboard shortcut preference after modifying it through `defaults write com.apple.symbolichotkeys AppleSymbolicHotKeys`?

On macos Big Sur 11.2.1 I have been able to resolve this problem. This solution applies to com.apple.symbolichotkeys plist for OS wide shortcuts as well as trackpad related plists.
After running the default write ... commands, run the following command.
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SystemAdministration.framework/Resources/activateSettings -u

From my experience, it will read the plists and force them to take effect.
You may need to ensure the System Preferences app is not running before you run the command.
Some log output will be available if you run this before:
defaults write com.apple.activatesettings log true

However there is no output about parsing the com.apple.symbolichotkeys plist although it seems to read that plist.


MacBook Pro 15" 2015 iGPU slows down from normal 750mhz to 200mhz

The new 10.14.6 macOS update says it "resolves a graphics issue that may occur when waking from sleep". I'm hoping that might be referring to this issue (I filed an issue a few weeks ago at https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/, so that may have prompted them to look into it, though they haven't responded to it).

I'll update this answer if I see the problem again after the update.

UPDATE: I'm still seing the problem in 10.14.6 (as well as OP who commented below), so this is unfortunately not the solution.


How can I send same email multiple times in iOS?

A good way to achieve this using just the builtin apps on iOS is to save your email as a Note in the Notes app. You can then Share it by Mail, and it will be formatted for you automatically, with the first line becoming the subject of your email.

You could even setup a Notes folder with a whole set of email templates that way.

Your question pertains to iOS and iPad, but in macOS you may also select a previously sent email, then go into the menu bar and click Message → Send Again or Redirect. These commands are also available through right-click.

Of course the Notes solution still applies in macOS.


Rsync: run backups like Time Machine and prevent removing non existing remote files/dirs on local folder

Folder selection in Time Machine
You can specify folders to be excluded from your Time Machine backup, specifically, you could specify everything BUT your specific files.
system preferences > time machine > options.


How to copy and paste Javascript code from a PDF file to a texteditor (Textmate or Sublime Text)

That's probably because the PDF uses actual curly quotation marks (which are indeed syntactically incorrect). The most straightforward thing to do would be performing a search and replace on the copied text in your text-editor.


How do I return the number of the current window in Chrome and open a new tab in it?

Here is the beginning of a very simple AppleScript that will open a new tab at the end of the current window, and then it will load a URL.  The script will wait 5 seconds (to allow the page to load) and then it will close that tab.  I am still working on it, but this should do it for you.  Let me know if you need some more help, or if you would like me to change something.  Here is the script:

tell application "Google Chrome"
set ActivePage to window 1
set Tab1 to make new tab at end of tabs of ActivePage
set URL of Tab1 to "http://google.com"
delay 5
close active tab of window 1
end tell


Copy SSH Public Key to clipboard WITHOUT newline appended

To copy your SSH Public Key cleanly to clipboard WITHOUT a trailing newline use

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | tr -d '\n' | pbcopy

or (without cat)

tr -d '\n' < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | pbcopy


Launchpad fails to show app icons contained in folders

I had the same problem.
Until now resetting the Launchpad database worked for me. Try:

defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool true; killall Dock

Note that this operation will reset the organisation of your Launchpad back to default.


You do not need to pipe to grep and then to awk in the first line as awk can do what's needed by itself. Also the way you have the first line written, it is missing the $(...) around the commands.

In the second line you're missing the field separator in the awk command, which in a .csv file normally is a comma. So I added that to the awk command.

Use the following two lines:

myBSSID="$(/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport -I | awk '/BSSID/{print $2}')"
awk -F ',' -v theBSSID="$myBSSID" '$1 == theBSSID {print $2}' "$HOME/Desktop/APtable.csv"

I noticed the output of the airport command didn't report the BSSID correctly in that if left out some zeros.

If that's the case on your system and the .cvs file has proper info, then try the following:

myBSSID="$(system_profiler SPAirPortDataType | awk '/BSSID/{print $2}')"
awk -F ',' -v theBSSID="$myBSSID" '$1 == theBSSID {print $2}' "$HOME/Desktop/APtable.csv"

Note that system_profiler SPAirPortDataType isn't as fast as using airport but if the output of airport is dropping some of the zeros, then you'll need an alternative if the BSSID's in the .cvs file have all 12 characters, not counting the colons, which they should.

The following could be used to incorporate both methods in a bash script so as to only use the second method if the length of myBSSID is less then 17 characters, as 17 is the correct length.

#!/bin/bash

myBSSID="$(/S*/L*/P*/A*/V*/A/R*/airport -I | awk '/BSSID/{print $2}')"
l="${#myBSSID}"
if [[ $l -lt 17 ]]; then
    myBSSID="$(system_profiler SPAirPortDataType | awk '/BSSID/{print $2}')"
fi
awk -F ',' -v theBSSID="$myBSSID" '$1 == theBSSID {print $2}' "$HOME/Desktop/APtable.csv"


How to send a group text to more than 10 people?

A group message can be sent either as an iMessage or an SMS. Just create the group to which you wish the message, the Messages app will automatically choose the appropriate message type based on recipients' settings, network connection, and carrier plan.

In depth guide on sending group message can be found in the Apple Support Document, Send a group message on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.


Is it possible to clone the operating system to a different machine?

Yes, it is possible to clone the OS between machines. SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner are the recommended ways to do so. Make sure both machines are on the same OS version (i.e. 10.7.3) before you do so.

However: Migration Assistant is really good. Try using it first. If that fails, then use SD! or CCC.


Is it possible to stream a YouTube video in Powerpoint for Mac 2011?

There is a very simple method by using the Hyperlink command in PowerPoint.

You can Hyperlink any object in you Presentation.

Here is a sample how to do it for this sample presentation I made.

Now Right Click on the Text Box "Streaming You Tube" and select Hyperlink.

In Hyperlink paste the link to the you tube video.

It looks like this in my example.


Is it possible to merge two iTunes Store accounts so we can share apps and other purchases?

Home sharing should allow you to see each other's libraries over your home network, and drag apps from your wife's onto yours and vice versa.  You can definitely do this despite having two accounts - my wife and I have a similar problem.  You may have to enter both passwords from time to time to authorize purchases, though.

I found some help setting this up from "Activating Home Sharing in iTunes".

I believe you can also sort hers by "items I don't have" so you can see what she might have bought of interest to you, although I'm not sure you can automatically sync them.

This SuperUser question seems to suggest that merging two accounts is not an option:
Can I merge 2 iTunes Store accounts?


I've had this problem in the past, and what works for me is typing into the terminal, "pkill -f safari". That will kill the application no matter what.


Songs purchased on iPhone won't sync back to the iPhone from iTunes

In the Apple support forums I found that if you log out of your AppleID on the iPhone (settings / iTunes & App Store) and log back in, you can sync again from iTunes and those purchased songs will now get synced with the iPhone again.


Looking at this Apple forum thread, the first solution was this:

A first guess is: bad com.apple.finder.plist file in ~/Library/Preferences/. Delete the file.

Here was another that seemed to help:

I solved this issue by setting my finder preferences for "New Finder window show:"  to my home folder... My issue was that it was defaulting to "All My Files"--- that caused finder to scan everything, images, thumbnails, etc and get up over 100% of cpu usage.


How do you delete music on iTunes Match if already deleted entirely from Mac?

Login to your iTunes Account in iTunes!
On the right hand side, there is a menu where you can click on a button which says: "Bought Content" (i'm a German User). There you have a list of all your media bought on iTunes!

Download your Music which you want to delete again, and then delete it correctly on your Mac!


I'm not totally sure what you're trying to do, but it sounds to me like you're trying to upgrade an iPad over-the-air. This should work, but transcending multiple operating system versions on your way up can cause problems. And could you be out of storage space?

Since this method isn't working, you should try the other method (scroll down after opening that link), which is updating the iPad via iTunes.

Plug the iPad into a Mac with iTunes installed.
Make the devices trust each other (accept trust if prompted)
Ensure the iPad is backed up to either iCloud or iTunes.
When the prompt is displayed on the Mac ("Would you like to update the software on this iPad") choose Download and Install to start the update.

Let the iPad update, and you'll be good to go.


Can't set own self-signed root certificate to "Always Trust" on macOS Sierra

I had this problem on Sierra with a very old root cert signed with MD5. Creating a new root CA certificate signed with SHA256 solved the issue.


iPad update 5.1, different connection, different size of update

It sounds like you're talking about the difference between an "Over The Air" (OTA) update, also called a delta update, done by tapping a button in the device's Settings - and a normal update done by clicking "Update" in iTunes on your computer.

OTA updates are smaller because they only include the new assets (code, images, etc.) from the update, instead of replacing all the assets on the device.

This article includes an example of this difference on an iPhone 4:

  Not only are over-the-air updates simple to install, but they’re also deltas. That means that the updates contain only the minimum data needed to upgrade, instead of the complete operating system. For the 5.0.1 update for a GSM iPhone 4, the over-the-air update weighed in at 44.6MB; the full download via iTunes was 790.7MB.


It shouldn't display a blank screen.  It should either display "Loading..." or "All apps are up to date." or a list of apps that have an update available.

I've only seen this happen when I had a good internet connection when I opened the app store and started "Loading..." but lost the connection before it was done loading. I don't recall if it happens when switching from wifi to cellular or back during the loading stage, but I suspect it might.

I have hundreds of apps on my 3GS, though, and it can take quite awhile to go from "Loading..." to a list, or to the "up to date" notice.

It can also happen if you experience a temporary internet glitch during loading, such as if you are close to a microwave, using an 802.11b/g network, while the microwave is running.

It shouldn't happen when you know you've got a good internet connection and the connection state doesn't change during loading.  I suppose it could happen on a particularly busy network if significant numbers of packets are being dropped.

If it happens consistently, I'd try rebooting, then a system refresh, then taking it to apple in that order.

The app store is one thing that doesn't seem particularly robust in the face of network disruptions, so that's what I'd suspect first.  If you're experiencing frequent network disruptions in other apps as well, you might have an iOS or hardware problem, and it might be worth a visit the apple store anyway.


How to remove "Disabled Software" from MacOS System Report when a provided uninstall tool does not work?

I have managed to get it working again. Here are the steps I had to go to:

Uninstall the DisplayLink drivers and restart the system.
Right after restarting the system, reinstall the drivers. Don't restart again yet.
Open System Preferences -> Security and Privacy. If you did that right after reinstalling the drivers, you should see a message saying that an extension was blocked. You should know what to do now.

The message on step 3 only was displayed to me immediately after starting the system.


MacBook Pro unusable when HDMI output is connected

The following facts are relevant to the workaround.

  A separate copy of SystemUIServer runs on behalf of each user, owned by that user, when the user has a GUI login. This is very convenient because it means we can kill this program without requiring passwords and suchlike.
  SystemUIServer appears to have been very nicely cordoned off by Apple from the rest of the system so that you can kill it at any time and nothing bad happens. The menulings all disappear, then launch restarts SystemUIServer, and the menulings all reappear (in a much smaller memory environment).
  So the simple one-off solution to the problem is to type in Terminal:
  killall SystemUIServer. And this works, but only once --- you will need to do it again in a week or so.
  The possibility I chose is to have launchd execute this command once a day, at a time when I'm probably not using the machine, namely 4:00am. (If your machine is asleep at that time, launchd in Snow Leopard performs the task when the machine is wakes up, and this works out OK --- we see just one more flash in the UI as the menulings are killed then restart, to accompany the various other flashes in the UI that occur when a wake occurs.

Source: Handle growing SystemUIServer memory usage


Outlook for Mac 2011 - how to delete buggy email in outbox that crashes Outlook

Can you delete the message in the outbox from webmail?  If it is not in webmail then it's on the outlook end of things.  If that is the case I would remove the entire profile in outlook and re-enter the e-mail accounts and let it build all over again rather than trying to just rebuild the database.


adb got stuck. not starting in terminal command

Try it with:

sudo adb start-server

Use your own password.

Opening port 5037 doesn't require privileged access, but there are some other flaky things with adb such as file/device permissions, etc. to which your own user account might not have access.


Unable to find the backed up photos in iCloud

Why your photos are not in iCloud Photos

  Now when I open iClould I see its completely blank.

Photos do not appear on iCloud.com unless iCloud Photo Library was turned on; from your description, it seems that it is not turned on: that is why the Photos section of iCloud is completely blank. You evidently did not have iCloud Photo Library turned on, so photos were tied to your device backup instead of being tied to your iCloud Drive. Thus, your photos are not visible from your iCloud account. But have no fear, that doesn't mean you can't access your photos.

How to get your photos back

You'll need a new/used iPad that runs iOS 7 or later (so iPad 2 or later, iPad Mini 1 or later). You can buy a relatively inexpensive used iPad Mini 1st gen here for ~$150, or upgrade to an iPad Mini 4th gen (the latest and greatest) here for ~$350. Make sure the iPad you purchase has at least as much storage space as your lost iPad before you buy it. (Note: Apple may offer to exchange your dead iPad if you contact their support team at getsupport.apple.com)

When first launching the iPad (if it's used, you must do a factory reset first if it still has data on it), follow these steps to set it up from a backup of your lost iPad Mini:

Turn on the new iPad.
From the Apps & Data screen, tap Restore from iCloud Backup, then sign-in to your iCloud account.
Proceed to “Choose backup,” then choose from a list of available backups in iCloud (probably just choose the latest backup).

After following these steps, your new iPad will boot up and have all of the data from your lost iPad Mini, including all of your photos.

What to do to prevent this next time

I recommend using the Google Photos app to seamlessly back up all of your photos/videos (free of charge, unlimited photos and videos). With Google Photos, you can access the backed-up photos/videos anytime on almost any device (including from the web at photos.google.com). Or, you can turn on Apple's iCloud Photo Library, in Settings -> iCloud -> Photos, which lets you access the photos anytime from icloud.com. (Note that iCloud Photo Library eats up your iCloud storage space and isn't free or unlimited like Google Photos is.)

Let me know if you need any further assistance, and please let me know whether this helped you or not!

Sources:

Apple's guide to restoring an iPad/iPhone from a backup
iCloud Photo Library info
iMore's guide to iCloud Photo Library


Flashing question mark when I start my Mac

If you have a backup, format the Mac's drive, taking care to protect the backup. If you don't have a backup, try some tools like DiskWarrior or TechTool on the Mac's drive. If those don't help, you'll probably have to format and lose your data.

If you can't format the drive, it will need to be replaced.


Fn is a function of the keyboard that modifies the key-codes being sent by the keyboard itself. Fn itself does not transmit any key-codes to the computer.

One option would be to try mapping the actual key (that is turned into Esc when Fn is pressed) to be the Esc key. I don't know of anything built into OS X that will do this across the board, however, you could try something like https://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/

To be honest, good keyboards are so cheap these days you should probably just buy yourself a nice new keyboard that has a layout which suites your needs better.


What happens if I remove the localhost address from /etc/hosts

the only difference is that in order to access local web servers (for development purposes) you will need to use the address 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost.


Set meta/command/⌘ key as Launchpad shortcut?

To make this work you have to use a third party tool: Karabiner.

In the customized keycode below I assume that you haven't enabled the consumer key function in System Preferences but have to access the consumer keys by using the fn+F1...F12.

In the example below just the left command key launches Launchpad if hit once. A second hit will close Launchpad again.

You can use either the left or the right command key as usual otherwise (e.g. open files with cmd+O or print cmd+P)

Download, install and open Karabiner
Open in the menulet Karabiner -> Preferences
Open the tab Misc & Uninstall
Hit the button Open private.xml
Open the file private.xml with an appropriate editor
Enter the customized keycode

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
    <item>
        <name>When you type Command_L only, start Launchpad</name>
        <appendix>(Change Command_L lazy start Launchpad)</appendix>
        <identifier>remap.command_l_lazy_to_launchpad</identifier>
        <autogen>__KeyOverlaidModifier__ KeyCode::COMMAND_L, KeyCode::VK_LAZY_COMMAND_L, KeyCode::LAUNCHPAD, ModifierFlag::FN</autogen>
    </item>
</root>

Save the file
Open in the menulet Karabiner -> Preferences the tab Change Key
Hit the ReloadXML button
Enable the remapping. It should be listed at the beginning.


Most cable modems need to be reset after connecting a different device, as they only accept one computer host with a single MAC (Media Access Control) address. So try pulling the power plug.


How does one a base a podcast playlist off of release date?

I'm not much of an AppleScripter, so this is modified from some scripts at Doug's AppleScripts website, but it's GPLed, so derivative works are allowed as long as they're also GPLed.

My idea was to make a script that could take the release date, which can't be used in smart playlists, and store it in the last skipped date, which can be used in smart playlists. If you just want to do this for podcasts (not for songs, for which you might actually use the last skipped field), just select your podcasts before running this script.

Once you do that, you can create a smart playlist selected on the "Last skipped" field to get the recently released podcasts.

So here we go:

 (*
 You can rename this script to whatever you want
 but please keep this information intact. Thanks.

 This program is free software released "as-is"; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.

 Get a copy of the GNU General Public License by writing to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301, USA.

 or visit http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

 *)

 tell application "iTunes"
set sel to selection
if sel is not {} then
    set ofi to fixed indexing
    set fixed indexing to true
    repeat with thisTrack in sel
        set reld to release date of thisTrack
        tell thisTrack to set skipped date to reld
    end repeat
    set fixed indexing to ofi
else
    display dialog return & "Select some tracks first..." buttons {"Cancel"} default button 1 with icon 0 giving up after 15
    return
end if -- no sel
 end tell


Windows resized after sleep with external display connected to Macbook Pro via DP to usb-c

I ended up installing and using Display Maid


Any way to connect 3 external displays to a 2018 Retina MacBook Air?

If you want a "native" display signal, the 2018 Retina MacBook Air is limited to 2 external monitors.

However, you can use other types of displays such as a USB display to act as a third monitor. They are generally limited in resolution, update frequency, GPU performance, etc. - so do not expect to be able to play 3D games or use 4k resolution on such a display.

If you want higher performance for the third display, you can connect an eGPU to the MacBook Air which would enable you to use more monitors with higher performance. Such a setup is usually quite more costly than a USB display however.


Changing an Apple ID from one @icloud.com address to another

From the Apple Support page about changing your Apple ID (emphasis added by me):

  If your Apple ID email address ends with @icloud.com, @me.com, or
  @mac.com, you can only change your email address to another
  @icloud.com, @me.com, or @mac.com email that's already associated with
  your account.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202667

If you created your Apple ID recently with an @icloud.com address as identifier, you most probably can't change that. I think the support document I linked to is targeted at users who have old @me.com or @mac.com addresses that Apple used to issue a long while ago. Or maybe there could be special situations where you actually have two @icloud.com addresses associated with one Apple ID as the result of merging two IDs with the help of Apple Support, but those would be rare exceptional cases. For a recently created @icloud.com style Apple ID, typically you can't change it.


Backing up just photo files from Photos library

You'll have your original pictures without edits, if backing up just the "Masters" folder.
From what I've seen, and depending on your configuration, this are some of the folders and educated guesses on what you will be losing:

Database folder: Database info on Albums,  faces, persons, and sharing history, keywords, places
There seems to be information on your iPhoto database, probably there if you upgraded from it to Photos.app as I did
Previews (which may be there if you have iCloud Photo Library as I do)
Projects
Faces thumbnails
Thumbnails


How can I create a backup of my iMac when it won't start and recovery mode fails

Have you tried starting your iMac in Target Disk Mode?

To do this, switch off your iMac and then boot it up again making sure to hold the T key down until you see an icon appear on the screen.

If that works, then you may be able to use this mode to access your Hard Drive from another Mac (or even a Windows PC). However, if using a Windows computer it has to have the right connections and also be able to read a Mac's drive, usually by having extra drivers such as MacDrive, TransMac, MacDisk, or HFSExplorer installed.

Speaking of connections, you didn't specify what model of iMac you have. Typically you would use an appropriate cable connecting the two computers via your FireWire or Thunderbolt port. USB is not supported.

Summary

In a nutshell, if you can get your iMac to start in Target Disk Mode, you can connect it to another computer (almost always another Mac) and your iMac's hard drive will then appear as an external drive on the other computer. If so, copy whatever files you can from it to another drive.

I should warn you though that it sounds as if your hard drive has failed, and doing this may not work. Also, even if it does, I wouldn't try reformatting it to continue using it. You really should replace the drive or use an external drive as your bootable drive.

Also, if you can boot from an external drive, another option is to just do that and try copying across your data that way (i.e. From the internal drive onto another drive). This avoids the need to try using Target Disk Mode.


This happens when I send a message to myself (iMessage to the same Apple ID).

Are you logged into separate Apple IDs? Check by going to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. Check both phones to see if they have the same Apple ID.

If they Do, here are instructions on fixing it:

You'll need to log out of iCloud and iMessage on one device
On this device, go to iCloud and create a new iCloud ID.
This keeps the ability to share purchases in iTunes & App Store, while changing the iCloud and iMessage IDs.


sshd: Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes for directory /Users/Foo

I was able to fix the issue by resetting user permissions via the following command:
 diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`


Can I delete the "remove the drive" menu in menu-bar in Catalina?

Removing icons from the menu bar for several versions of macOS has the same process. Knowing that, I’ll guess you are referring to this eject icon:

This is the Disk Eject Icon.

If you hold the ⌘ Command key down while clicking on the icon you should be able to drag it out of the menu bar and it will be gone.

If that ain't it add your image to the question and we'll go from there.


Update (for iOS 10.3+)
Since iOS 10.3 star ratings can be enabled as follows:
Settings > Music > Show Star Ratings (enable)
-
Important: Apple Music songs can not be rated with stars. It works only for music that

was added manually to iTunes (MP3s, M4A, AAC)

is available in your iTunes Match library and/or

was bought in the iTunes Music Store (iTMS)

Show/change an active song's rating:

Open Music.app
Show the currently playing song. You may need to tap the Mini Player near the bottom.
Tap the ellipsis (...) in the lower right.
The song popover appears. Find "Rate Song...". It's located below "Share Song" or "Create Station".
Tap "Rate Song..."
In the new popover change the star rating.
Confirm your changes by tapping "Done".

Show/change a song's rating in a list view (iPhone 6s/6s Plus/7/7 Plus or newer):

Open Music.app
In any standard list (playlist, album view) force press on a song
The song popover appears. Find "Rate Song...". It's located below "Share Song" or "Create Station".
Tap "Rate Song..."
In the new popover change the star rating.
Confirm your changes by tapping "Done".

Original answer
Yes, this is the feature I miss the most in iOS 10.
Currently there are these options

Use Siri to rate songs: "Rate this song five stars". You cannot see a rating, however.
Please send a feedback to Apple. Please, do it. Apple actually reads feedback.

Feel free to use my text:
.
Subject:

Music.app: display/set song rating with stars is missing

Feedback Type:

Bug Report

Comments:

Dear iOS team,
please bring back the Music.app feature to see and set star ratings for songs.
Since installing iOS 10 I cannot see or set my song ratings for my music with stars (0-5 stars). I used this feature very often until now.
With Siri I can only set a rating, but I'm not able to see it. However, this does not work when I'm offline.
Is there another way to see/set a song's star rating in iOS 10?
Thank you


I am using Yosemite - but my Mail is v 8 - how can I upgrade Mail?

There is no higher version than 8 for Apple's Mail app.

Maybe is your auto configure talking about Microsoft Outlook version which is higher than 10.


How do you switch between built-in audio and headphone audio without unplugging?

I think the condition has always been there.  I believe plugging into the headphone jack physically disconnects the sound output from the speakers.  I believe you will have to use bmike's suggestion to get the desired outcome.


What does System Preferences > iCloud > Mail do?

This is the iCloud Mail service. Turning it on provides the iCloud mail account for Mail.app to use, nothing more. It is basically an automated method of entering the iCloud mail server information into Mail.app to configure your @icloud.com email account, per this Apple KB article:

iCloud: Mail server information

It does not sync other accounts in any way - settings or emails of other accounts are not affected by this setting, just your @icloud.com or @me.com account.

You can read more about iCloud Mail at this Apple KB article:

iCloud: Mail overview


In the OS X Contacts app (v7.1) how can I delete a group?

Select the group
Click "Edit" in the menubar
Click "Delete Group"
Click Delete


OS X Lion Connection to Business network?

I don't see a reason not to set up a VPN. You can add the VPN menu to the status bar and your client can simply select their VPN and enter a password when prompted. It's no more difficult than say, a TeamViewer connection setup. (In fact, VPN is arguably easier, since the system stores your username and merely prompts for a password. TeamVewer requires an ID and a password.)

I just began using VPN this week, and it's super easy. Really. To add VPN to the status bar:

Then, your client can simply click to connect, like so:

(VPN info blurred for security reasons.)


How can I disable my iPad's screen turning on when there is a notification?

I think, you have two (or maybe three) possibilities:

1. The "Do not disturb"-mode

When the "Do not disturb"-mode is enabled, your iPad won't make any sound and does not turn on the screen, when you get a notification. But you can still see the notifications on your lockscreen, when you turn on the display manually.

2. Turn of notifications for Telegram

If you turn of the notifications for Telegram, you won't be notified about any message. That would solve your problem, but I think you still want to see notifications for some of your chats?

(3. Mute some chats)

Since I'm not using Telegram, I'm not sure, if this is possible. But any modern messenger has options to mute individual chats for a while, so they won't send you push-notifications anymore.


MacBook Pro retina, hardware repair - advice

Their evaluation & explanation sounds legitimate.  I would assume that when the coffee was spilled it made it's way into the keyboard.  If this is the case it's entirely reasonable to assume that it would make it's way through the keys and inside the top case, with the next component it reaches being the logic board.

In regards to your two questions:

1) Without seeing the Mac and only relying on my experience (see below) I can only make an assumption, but from the information given the list of parts does seem very likely.  Yes, the logic board contains a majority of components for your Mac.  The processor, GPU, SMC, some ports, etc are all located on this one major component.  With the way I'm assuming the spill occurred the coffee wouldn't have made it to the SSD, which connects directly to the logic board, thanks to the SSD being located on the opposite side of the logic board.  The only fault I see with their explanation is the speakers, I haven't replaced a Retina top case in a while but I could've sworn that the speakers are still separate components.

2) There's no way for them to tell you upfront if the parts are new or refurbished.  Apple re-uses eligible (meaning not beyond economical repair) parts after a strict refurbishing process that includes individual testing of components.  When technicians receive parts there is no distinguishing feature to know if it's used or newly manufactured.  Honestly, the only way to be sure is if you request a part for a Mac that was just released, simply because there wouldn't have been time to collect used parts and put them through the refurbishing cycle.  Either way in my experience I've never seen a trend of service (repair) parts being faulty.  It DOES happen from time to time but I've never seen a trend of obviously refurbished parts leading to repeat repairs or premature failures.  Apple's replacement parts do carry a 90 day warranty or take over the rest of your existing AppleCare warranty, whichever is a longer period.

Did the AASP mention a flat rate or depot repair to you?  I haven't priced out the parts they mentioned in a while b considering the amount of damage that might be a little bit cheaper.  Basically Apple offers tiered flat rate repairs for out of warranty situations.  Since this is liquid damage it would likely be a tier 4, the highest of them, but it might still be a little cheaper.  Might be something to ask them about.

Source - I worked as a Genius for several years, as an in-store and onsite AppleCare certified technician for several years and have dealt with AppleCare extensively on both sides (as a technician and as a representative for an enterprise customer) for several years.  I've repaired well over 1000 MacBooks, around 1000 iMacs, several hundred MacBook Pros/Airs and a couple hundred Mac minis and Mac Pros.  Everything from in warranty failures to severe fire and liquid damage.


Mail, Automation can't be configured after Time Machine restore after OS re-install

Ugh. I never did figure out what went wrong. I re-formatted the disk (always a teeth-clenching experience), and re-installed Mojave from the thumb drive installer I made from the DosDude instructions.
So far, this is the same as before. But this time, when it was done installing and booted up, I used Migration Assistant to restore everything except my home directory, instead of everything.
Then, I logged in, and re-ran Migration Assistant, this time, restoring only my home directory.
Now, things seem to be working normally.


The only way I've found to deal with this on a non-jailbroken phone is to set the side switch to the non-silent setting, plug in headphones and then dock the phone. The chime sound will only play through the headphones and the phone will not vibrate.


How to stop Google Photos from launching at system startup?

If it's listed in System Prefs > Users & Groups > [yourname] > Login Items,
select & hit the minus sign  -   underneath.


Is there something in a Mac Pro that could make it sensitive and reboot when bumped?

This something is quite possibly a loose PCI card, maybe your video card, it can have some stress on it from the weight and pull of the VGA or DVI cable. Could be a usb daughter card as well. Unplug the machine from the power mains. Reseat the cards, blow the dust off them. Maybe it won't reboot on bump any more.

tl;dr: A loose PCI card can cause a reboot, they aren't hot-swappable.


Why does show hidden files shortcut only work intermittently?

I've run across this recently and the way I got it working again was to "refresh" the Finder window.  Since there's no refresh F5 like there is in Windows, you have to move out of the directory and then back in.  Additional, you can close the Finder window and reopen it.

It seems to be a bug within Finder


AppleScript SL to ML Issue (compatibility error?)

this might fix it, failing that can you post the contents of the plist files from ~/Library/LaunchAgents

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving the_files

--set login vars
set fileExt to "zip"
set scpIP to "blah"
set scpUser to "blah"
set scpDest to "/home/blah"
set scpPort to "1234"

--repeat on each file that is added to the folder
repeat with each_file in the_files
    set filename to name of (info for each_file)
    --check extension, if match, scp. else, error.
    if name extension of each_file is fileExt then
        try
            do shell script "scp -p" & scpPort & " " & scpUser & "@" & scpIP & ":" & scpDes
            tell application "System Events" to move each_file to trash
        end try
    end if
end repeat
end adding folder items to


How do I focus a specific window with applescript without doing an activate and bringing other windows to the front?

You're right that the activate command raises all windows. The open shell command only raises one window though:

tell application "Google Chrome" to set index of window 1 where title contains "whatever" to 1
delay 0.05
do shell script "open -a Google\\ Chrome"


How to tell macOS to move things to the cloud and free space on my laptop?

iCloud is a syncing solution and not a backup in the same sense as Dropbox or OneDrive.  It's not possible to keep something on iCloud and not on a device at the same time.

The setting Optimise Mac Storage setting creates a reference to the documents when your Mac is low on storage but still keeps the file in sync.  The file is not really removed from your device because if you delete the referenced file on the Mac it will delete it in iCloud, too, which is not what you wanted. It runs on its own schedule and constraints.

What iCloud offers is the ability to access files from all devices that are signed-in using that same Apple ID.  It was never meant to be, or designed, to act as an offsite storage.

If you need to do that you'll have to look at using other providers, like the one's I've already mentioned, for those file.


D-Link DIR-880L + Mac => monthly data usage stats possible?

I'm pretty frustrated with the "crappy software with no update ever" business model of D-Link so I'm thinking about maybe buying a Synology router instead (already have a NAS from them and I like their OS) but I'd rather spend $0 with some Terminal Voodoo or something like that

Ahhh yes... You've seen the light!  Consumer grade routers are just too limited for what they do.  You need a proper router that has the ability to measure your bandwidth.
As for Terminal "voodoo," no.  There's no magic command that allows you to simply measure the amount of data that has gone out to the internet.  75% of it is how you architect the hardware setup.  If not your router, you need to somehow put your computer (it's network interface) between your router and your network so it can "count" all of the network packets going in and out.  It's like having a bouncer at a bar with one of those click counters but instead of putting him at the door, he sits at the bar - there's no way he can accurately count the patrons coming and going; you need him at the door.

but I'd rather spend $0

Then you want pfSense.  I'm a huge fan of Synology and make heavy use of the NAS gear.  As for networking, I swear by pfSense for my routing.  First off, it's free.  Their model is either to purchase their appliance or purchase managed support.  You can install pfSense on a cheap Core 2 Duo.  Your biggest expense will be a quad Ethernet port if you want to have a DMZ or handle multiple LANs.  I put one because I put my guest WiFi network on it's own network and kept them separate from everything else.
Here's just one of the sample Stats reports (Traffic Graph) that comes out of the box.

However, based on your premise for starting this project, no more unlimited bandwidth, you can set up traffic limiters to prevent going over.


App that scans local network for shared folders?

Finder by default will show shared folders for most services.

For an more in depth look at what a machine is running you can always port scan the heck out of it. Then connecting is as easy as memorizing proper instructions over telnet or plugging into Finders 'Connect to Server' dialog.

nmap (really sudo nmap) is one of the fastest, most informative port scanning tools out there. It spanks the pants off any GUI for speed and service comprehension. Try something like the the following.

# [target ip] = Ip of the host to scan
sudo nmap -PN -n -sV --version-all [target ip]


Go to the photo in Photos, tap Edit, then tap the Crop button to show the Rotate button.

Tapping the Crop button is what's new here as in iOS 7 this wasn't required.


How can I get the Navionics App for iphone to utilise a third party gps

From the frequently asked questions page, it appears Navionics has not tested third party GPS devices:

  Q. If I attach an external GPS to my iPod Touch 2nd Generation, will I locate my position on the Navionics app?

  A. Navionics has not tested this thoroughly enough to guarantee a good performance.

The answer suggests third party GPS devices should just work, but may not be reliable.


I have an iPhone 6. How can I use two Bluetooth audio devices and the 3.5mm audio jack together?

As far as multiple pairs of Bluetooth headphones simultaneously, no, not without additional hardware. While you can obviously pair your iPhone with multiple Bluetooth devices, it can only output audio to one Bluetooth device at a time due to limitations in the A2DP audio profile that is used to transmit audio to the Bluetooth device.

You also cannot output audio to both wired headphones and a Bluetooth audio device at the same time. They are separate options on the audio output menu in Control Center ("iPhone" is the output setting for wired headphones). This was determined through my testing.


Pictures are very bright when using the flash

Some cases do not leave enough of an opening around the flash LEDs. The edges of the case then reflect light from the flash onto the camera sensor, resulting in a lot of glare during flash photography and video recording.

The only solution is to not use that case while using your camera’s flash. It would be best to simply switch to a different case with a wider/better-designed rear camera opening.


Big Sur: Booting Win10 from SSD and Disable Internal Drive

The firmware, stored on the logic board of your Mac, contains both BIOS and UEFI boot loaders. Additionally, the firmware on the logic board contains the Mac Startup Manager, which allows you to choose available startup disks or volumes. You can access the Mac Startup Manager by holding down the Option (⌥) or Alt key immediately after starting or restarting your Mac.

IFAIK, the the Mac Startup Manager can not be configured to to ignore the internal drive.

However, there exists other startup (boot) managers which can be configured to ignore the internal drive. One such free product is the rEFInd Boot Manager. To configure rEFInd to only search for BIOS booting external drives, one only has to add the following line to the end of the refind.conf file.
scanfor biosexternal

Furthermore, the rEFInd Boot Manager can be configured during installation to be accessible from the Mac Startup Manager. The rEFInd Startup Manager can be installed in your existing EFI partition, so you will not have to make changes to your external drive. If desired, rEFInd can silently BIOS boot windows installed on an external drive.
I used a 2013 iMac to verify your problem with the Mac Startup Manager exists. Next, I installed rEFInd to verify rEFInd would solve the problem. A more detailed explanation is given as an answer to the question Two Bootcamp installations: first one on Internal HDD and second one on external Thunderbolt 2 SSD.


External USB-C SSD not recognized on MacBook Pro

Since you're using a Beta version of Catalina it is always possible that this issue could be resolved by the final release version of Catalina.

However, assuming this is purely related to a hardware limitation with your current setup, the only way to try and resolve it is to get enough power to the external SSD. As such, you have the following options you could try:

If the external USB-C drive has the option for its own power source connected to it, then doing that will solve the problem
You could opt for an adapter that connects from two USB-A ports to one USB-C port, thereby combining the power from two ports to provide enough for the external drive
You could use a powered external USB hub or dock (i.e. connect the USB Hub to the MBP and then connect the USB-C drive to the hub)
Double-check that the adapter you're using is actually capable of passing enough power through

NOTES:

While there are many cables/adapters that can utilise the power from two USB-A ports to a single USB-A port, I'm not sure if one exists that goes to a single USB-C port - so you may need a second adapter to get this to work.
Only you can decide if the expense of using a hub or dock is warranted in this use case.


How to create Automator Service to change font of selected text?

You could assign a shortcut to a script like this:

tell application "System Events" to tell (process 1 where frontmost is true)
    set {c1, c2} to value of attribute "AXSelectedTextRange" of text area 1 of scroll area 1 of window 1
end tell
tell application (path to frontmost application as text) to tell document 1
    tell characters c1 thru c2
        set font to "Menlo"
        set size to 18
    end tell
end tell

It works with TextEdit and WriteRoom, but it probably needs to be modified for other applications.

Another really awful option:

try
    set old to the clipboard as record
end try
do shell script "textutil -stdin -stdout -format html -convert rtf <<< 'a' | pbcopy"
tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "v" using command down
    keystroke "c" using {option down, command down}
    keystroke "z" using command down
    keystroke "v" using {option down, command down}
end tell
delay 0.05
try
    set the clipboard to old
end try


Basically the same applies as in this question and the accepted answer.
The only difference is that you have a fusion drive and therefore some DiskIdentifiers differ.

Additionally you have a blocking partition on your HDD with certainty which has to be removed.

There is one undocumented command to resize or expand a CoreStorage volume group and an inherent logical volume:

diskutil cs resizeStack LVUUID size

The command expands or shrinks the whole CoreStorage Volume Group including the physical volume(s), the logical volume family and the logical volume in one step to the desired size.

Beware: The command is vastly undocumented and as such potentially destructive.

Preparation:

Backup your data.
Detach any external drive (especially your external Time Machine backup drive).
Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.
The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot to a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an apple/akamai server.

I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (Mavericks or Yosemite) or a thumb drive containing a full system (Mavericks or Yosemite). The disk identifiers may differ then. So check the human readable names and sizes and change the commands below accordingly.

Get an overview:

Open in the menubar Utilities/Terminal

First you should get an overview of your disks and the partition layout:
Enter diskutil list
Example listing (but I took the list provided by you in your question and included the netboot device):

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         119.7 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         626.1 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk1s3
   4:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk1s4
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                         *1.3 GB    disk2
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         30.7 KB    disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS OS X Base System        *1.3 GB    disk2s2
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *739.9 GB   disk3

/dev/disk4-disk14 ...belong to the OS X Base System (your recovery system you booted to previously)

Disk0 is your first main internal disk device (SSD) containing an EFI-partition (dis0s1), one CoreStorage partition (disk0s2) and Boot OS X (disk0s3).

Disk1 is your second main internal disk device (HDD) containing an EFI-partition (dis1s1), one CoreStorage partition (disk1s2) and the Recovery HD (disk1s3).
Additionally the disk contains a second EFI partition (disk1s4), which is a remains of your failed Boot Camp install.

Disk2 is a logical disk created by booting to the netboot image which contains a recovery system (OS X Base System = disk2s2) similar to the Recovery HD.

Disk3 is also a logical disk residing in disk0s2 and disk1s2 and it contains the CoreStorage stack.
Enter gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk1 to get the index number of the blocking partition
Example listing (your sizes differ):

gpt show: /dev/disk1: mediasize=68719476736; sectorsize=512; blocks=134217728
gpt show: /dev/disk1: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Sec GPT at sector 134217727
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  104974016      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  105383656    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  106653192     204800      4  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
  106857992   27359703
  134217695         32         Sec GPT table
  134217727          1         Sec GPT header

The partition with the index number 1 is a regular EFI-partition, the partition with index number 2 is your second CoreStorage physical volume and the partition with index number 3 is your Recovery HD.
The partition with index number 4 (= No Name EFI) usually only exists if you had a failed Boot Camp install or removed a subsequent Windows partition manually.
All the rest is unallocated free space (in the example 27359703 blocks à 512 B).
Enter diskutil cs list
Example listing (but I took the list provided by you in your question):

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 57932797-4AC8-4475-9836-82394CEBF536
    =========================================================
    Name:         LogicalVolumeGroup
    Status:       Online
    Size:         745750200320 B (745.8 GB)
    Free Space:   353689600 B (353.7 MB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 68F90B2B-4004-4044-AFFB-9D3854006D2A
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     119690149888 B (119.7 GB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 9CB6C261-6817-42F0-B2EB-09F057462EBD
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     626060050432 B (626.1 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 9B947A52-7496-46CA-BFA5-A87DD47249FE
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         None
        Conversion Status:       NoConversion
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   No
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 86417B41-6400-4F81-8F7C-43AA243CDAEE
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk3
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          739901915136 B (739.9 GB)
            Conversion Progress:   -none-
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

Remove blocking partition:

to resize the CoreStorage volume you have to delete any blocking partition first (the Recovery HD doesn't count because it usually will be moved with the resizeStack command).
First you have to unmount all mounted volumes on disk0 and disk1 (first the CoreStorage volume, which has its own disk identifier disk3 but resides on disk0 and disk1, then all other mounted volumes on disk0 and disk1 - check this with df):

diskutil unmount /dev/disk3

then additional volumes (if you have any at all). Example:

diskutil unmount /dev/disk1s5

Now delete the NoName EFI partition by entering:

gpt remove -i 4 disk1

Remount any previously unmounted volume in the reverse order with

diskutil mount /dev/disk1s5
diskutil mount /dev/disk3

Modify CoreStorage stack:

Since any blocking partition (in your case the NO NAME EFI partition) is deleted you may now resize the CoreStorage volume with

diskutil cs resizeStack LVUUID size

with LVUUID: UUID of the logical volume and size: the final size of your CoreStorage volume.

Examples:

diskutil cs resizeStack 86417B41-6400-4F81-8F7C-43AA243CDAEE 900g

to expand it to 900 GB

diskutil cs resizeStack 86417B41-6400-4F81-8F7C-43AA243CDAEE 500g

to shrink it to 500 GB

diskutil cs resizeStack 86417B41-6400-4F81-8F7C-43AA243CDAEE 0g

to expand it to the full available size (0g is a magic number here).

Your Recovery HD should be moved automatically - regardless of whether shrinking or expanding the CS volume - to the very end of it (right after the CoreStorage volume).
In case of shrinking or not expanding the CoreStorage volume to the full available size you may now create a 2nd partition with gpt.
Enter the following to get the new partition scheme:

gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk1

and

gpt add -b StartBlock -i IndexNumber -s SizeOfPartition -t PartitionType disk1

to create a new partition. StartBlock is the number of the first block in the unallocated space and NumberOfBlocks is the number of free blocks or smaller. NumberOfBlocks has to be dividable through 8!
Enter exit and quit Terminal.
Open Disk Utility (and format your newly created partition if you have created a new partition in the second last step).
Then check your expanded CoreStorage volume for errors.
Quit Disk Utility.
Reboot to your main volume.


Mac has same IP as another device until I restart the Airport

The fault when a computer asks for a DHCP address and then gets one lies with the other device not releasing that address when its lease expires or the router for handing out the lease improperly.

The number one cause of the router handing out wrong addresses is when you reboot the router.

To fix this - determine how long your lease is set using AirPort utility and change the range you are sending out addresses. For example - if you were sharing 192.168.1.1 change things to start sharing from 192.168.1.200 and up. Then once the lease time has passed after this restart - use a network scan tool to find all the devices that have not renewed and adopted 200+ addresses.

Those are your problem children so you can either hand them a static IP or fix their software.

Once you have that, you can return to the range of addresses you wish to lease out.

Or if you want to make a bigger change - switch the Airport to use 10.x or 172.x addressing and really break things for the non-compliant devices.

Note - each device needs to release and renew their address after you reboot, so power off WiFi or restart everything - don't forget about all the printers, internet connected appliance, home automation lights and switches, etc... They tend to be forgotten. If you don't have a network scan tool, look into using http://brew.sh to install nmap. It's powerful and well updated and runs on many versions of OS X.


How do I preserve leading zeroes in Mac Excel?

From the Home tab, select the cells you wish to format, and from the format drop-down under Number select Custom. Or, right-click and choose Format Cells, or hit Cmd-1.

This will pop-up a dialog window with the various formatting options.

Again, make sure you're on Custom.

In the Type box type in: 000000

Click Ok.

Alternatively - change the formatting type to text. This will keep whatever you type in the box.


How do I copy to the OSX clipboard from a remote shell using iTerm2?

Solution

Piecing together lots of information from several different sources, here's what I came up with.

Local Daemon

From the local computer (OSX), setup a daemon to listen on a specific port, via launchd (see links below). The daemon process will simply call pbcopy, which will take anything passed in via STDIN and put it on the clipboard. To do this you need to setup a launchd plist file. Mine looked like this:

<?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.pbcopy.9999</string>
    <key>UserName</key>
    <string>joe</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/usr/bin/pbcopy</string>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/pb9999.out</string>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/pb9999.err</string>
    <key>Sockets</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Listeners</key>
        <dict>
            <key>SockNodeName</key>
            <string>localhost</string>
            <key>SockServiceName</key>
            <string>9999</string>
        </dict>
    </dict>
    <key>inetdCompatibility</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Wait</key>
        <false/>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

By convention, the plist file name should be the label name with .plist appended, so for the above example, it would be local.pbcopy.9999.plist. If you wish to use a port other than 9999, just change it everywhere (keeping in mind that it should be something above 1024 and should not be a well-known port that you might already be using). Once you have things working, you can remove the StandardOutPath and StandardErrorPath keys and strings, as they're only needed for debugging.

In order to load the daemon, run the following command:

$ launchctl load local.pbcopy.9999.plist

You can see that it's loaded or remove it with the following commands:

$ launchctl list local.pbcopy.9999
$ launchctl remove local.pbcopy.9999

If you would like this to load every time you login, place the plist file into the ~/Library/LaunchAgents directory.

Note: you will need to set this up on each local host you want this to work on.

SSH Port-Forwarding

Because I could be accessing the remote machine from several different local computers, I can't hard-code the sending of the data on the remote machine to a specific host. To make this as painless and dynamic as possible, I've used SSH port-forwarding to create a dynamic link from the remote machine back to the local computer (the how's and why's of this are beyond this answer; see below for more information). Specifically, I create a link from the remote machines's port 9997 to the local computer's port 9999, which now has a daemon listening on it, thanks to the launchd stuff above. I could use port 9999 on both the remote machine and the local computer, but I don't need to.

To setup this tunnel, execute the following command:

$ ssh -R 9997:localhost:9999 user@remote.com

You can remote into multiple different remote machines with the same command and all will function as expected. You can remote into the same remote machine multiple times with the same command, and it will sort of work as expected; see note below.

If you don't feel like typing the -R 9997:localhost:9999 on every SSH invocation you make, you can put the remote forwarding definition in the SSH config file to do it automatically. Here's an example from my ~/.ssh/config file:

Host ufo*
  RemoteForward 9997 localhost:9999

With that, any time that I SSH to a host whose name starts with 'ufo', the remote forwarding from 9997 to localhost:9999 will automatically be set up. See the config file man page link below for more options.

Sending Data

On the remote end I use netcat to send the desired content back to the listening daemon.

$ date | nc localhost 9997

You can get as complicated as you'd like:

$ nc localhost 9997 <<EOF
> `ls -ld *`
> `date`
> EOF

You can even dynamically decide whether or not to send any data, based on whether or not anyone is listening (there's probably a more efficient way to do this, but it works):

#!/bin/bash
cnt=`(netstat -lnptu 2>/dev/null) | grep 127.0.0.1:9999 | grep -v grep | wc -l`
if [[ $cnt -eq 1 ]]; then
    date | nc localhost 9999
fi

Observations & Caveats

Things I noted:

pbcopy plays nicely with Copy'em Paste
if you initiate more than one SSH session with the same remote port forwarding to the same remote machine, only the first one will have any effect; no "duplicate port" type errors will be reported on either end
similarly, if you remote in from several different local computers to the same remote machine using the same remote port (e.g. 9997), only the first one will have any effect

Reference Links

launchd Tutorial
launchd Examples
SSH Port Forwarding
SSH Config files


Try to uncheck Store passphrases in OS X Keychain by default and press Delete stored passphrases button in GPGPreferences if you installed GPG Suite.
Also try to comment this line from your ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf:

use-agent


If your external disk interface supports it, a good tool is to use smartctl. You can get it by installing HomeBrew and then running this command in the Terminal:
brew install smartmontools

Then run smartctl like this:
smartctl -a /dev/diskX

where X should be replaced with the disk number of the SSD in question.
In the output, you want to look for a line like this:

Percentage Used:                    1%

This is an indication of the wear on the drive. However, note that it is not an exact science - the drive could wear out before it reaches 100%, and it might also reach values above 100%.
Note: Wearing the drive down doesn't make it slow, as you seem to indicate in your question. When the drive wears out it will fail to be able to read some or all of the data that you have stored on the drive.
Make sure you have a working backup system in place. Just looking at the wear indicator and replacing the drive when the indicator is high won't ensure that you will keep your data.


Usually this is a corrupt .DS_Store file. Delete it and see if your shaky folder clears up.

In finder - press command + shift + .

Then you can delete the file and revert the setting to show hidden files if you wish to not see them.


Remote Login via Finder: Choose user account without entering password

I accomplish this in Safari:

vnc://username:password@server

If I then create a bookmark, whenever I execute it, it will open up without prompting me for the password. For the sake of convenience, I save the bookmark to the desktop.

EDIT: Additionally, you can copy the bookmark to a location (such as the desktop), and change the file extension to .vncloc to open Screen Sharing directly.


How can I send “text messages” from iPhone to Android with an email (not cellular) as the address?

If you are referring to sending a text message like a SMS to someone else via an e-mail address, then the answer is usually no. Emails is usually not meant for this kind of use, but apparently at least in the US it may be possible. Check SteveChambers answer about that.
Your confusion most likely comes from Apples messages app, that allows you to send messages (similar to Telegram) to devices without a phone number. This, however, is restricted to Apple products like Macs and iPads.
The easiest and most obvious way for you to communicate would be via email. You have to have an email address configured in an email client (the preinstalled one on iOS is fine) and from there you can send an email to the recipient. However, the recipient needs a way of accessing their email, like an email client app or through a browser.


Is there a way to merge Safari history databases?

Keep one set in Safari and insert the other into another browser and then import it in Safari.
Chrome should work fine for that. https://github.com/Roman2K/hist_safari2chrome
Create a db file for Chrome and replace the empty one under the folder for Chromium in ~/Library.
Quit Chrome and import History in Safari.

Better way is to use sqlite to merge them.. but I'm illiterate in that language.


Spotlight shortcut not working within an app(s) anymore

Have you tried changing your Spotlight shortcuts? You can set the spotlight shortcuts (or any others) to whatever feels good for you.

Apple menu > System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Spotlight

Click the shortcut you want to change, then tap the new shortcut keys on your keyboard.

A quicker way to launch commonly used applications would be to set a shortcut to launch a specific app. to do this, create an automator script to launch the application then set a shortcut to run the script. Here's a tutorial that explains how to do it.
https://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-launch-any-app-with-a-keyboard-shortcut--mac-31463


What's the fastest connection speed / shortest elapsed time using Migration Assistant?

Gigabit ethernet to gigabit ethernet. Next would be FireWire 800 to FireWire 800. Thunderbolt target disk mode is testing to be equivalent to FireWire 800 in target disk mode.

It looks like the OS can keep a gigabit link fuller than target disk mode is able, even when the target mode link has vastly higher bandwidth available.