Where does macOS really install the SF Pro Text fonts?

Yes, its located at System/Library/Fonts.  There are several versions for different uses. SF-Pro for macs, and iPads, SF Compact for iWatch. And a third one for the terminal called SF-mono
Apple has a very restrictive license for these fonts. It may be a good idea to read it.


Share a folder with photos with someone via Internet and Apple native tools

The less-friction solution would be to upload the compressed version of the photos. And then use iCloud file sharing.

You can try Mail Drop.

  With Mail Drop, you can send attachments up to 5 GB in size. You can
  send these attachments right from Mail on your Mac, the Mail app on
  your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, and from iCloud.com on your Mac or
  PC. All files types are supported and attachments don’t count against
  your iCloud storage. If a message, including its attachments, is
  larger than your Internet Service Provider (ISP) limit, Mail will ask
  you to send the attachments using Mail Drop.

Source:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203093


What is the meaning of the "§" symbol (on the upper left corner of the mac keyboard)?

"§" is the section sign, as answered by @Lizzan.

Excerpt from Wikipedia:

  The section sign (§) is a typographical character used mainly to refer to a particular section of a document, such as a legal code. It is also called "double S" and "sectional symbol".
  It is also sometimes used to link to a footnote where the asterisk (*) is already in use on a given page.


How to close the emoji palette using the keyboard shortcut?

The behaviour is somewhat awkward.

Even the Menu option doesn't toggle it on/off, only on.

If you simply double-click your emoji without doing anything else, it doesn't even bring the window to the front...

..so, the only real option is after you open it, click its header bar [while you're over there anyway to grab your emoji]
It will then respond to  Cmd ⌘   W  the same as any other window.

 Of course, if you forget, it will close the window you were working in  :\


Dashboard takes few seconds to update widgets

The solution comes from a System Preference pane called Dashboard Kickstart.

  This application runs in the background and reacts to the starting or re-starting of the Dock. When that happens it initiates the starting of the Dashboard. This prevents the delay you'll experience when launching Dashboard the first time you want to use it.


Outlook 2011 Keyboard Shortcut for going to Inbox

I wrote a little AppleScript to do this. If you copy it to your "~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Outlook Script Menu Items" folder you can assign a shortcut key to it using System Preferences/Keyboard.

Works like a charm.

The script is:

on run {}
    tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
        set selected folder to inbox
    end tell
end run


How can I verify if SSH is disabled with the Terminal on Sierra?

sudo systemsetup -getremotelogin

This will return "Remote Login: On" or "Off" depending on the state of the Remote Login option in Sharing.prefpane.

There's no such thing as systemctl on macOS, but systemsetup does many things; check the list with sudo systemsetup -help.


You can’t downgrade iOS and keep your content and settings and applications. You would need to connect it to a Mac with Finder or PC with iTunes and restore it which erases everything.


Terminal auto complete and arrow keys working incorrectly

The above issue was caused by using ksh shell which seems to be the default for my laptop. After switching it to bash shell, all the above issues have been resolved.


How can I find the size of multiple folders?

cmd+alt/option+i will give you info on multiple highlighed items.


For part 2, I've had the same issue. I thought I'd fixed it by deleting the Lloyds app. I checked my contacts and it took me straight to Facebook. I then reinstalled the Lloyds app, however the issue of the Lloyds bank app stealing the contact reference when they were accessed returned.

Today, after installing the updates for both Facebook and the Lloyds apps has solved the part two problem.


PDFs are not natively readable with TextWrangler.

Adobe has a paid version of Acrobat that can compare two PDF files. There is a free trial available if this is a one-off need to compare PDFs.

This question may also be related to this StackExchange post.


Where are crash logs after a system freeze?

Apple moves the logs from version to version, but I would start with sysdiagnose.

Open the terminal app and type sysdiagnose or press the keys to trigger the data collection process.

How do you get system diagnostic files from OS X?

The good thing about this is it collects both the traditional log file based logs, snapshots like recent crashes, panics, hangs as well as a recent sample stored in a potable log archive format of the system log database files (since 10.9 more and more logs are stored in the apple system logs database as opposed to flat files and panic logs).

From there, you can open the file and search for the panics and crashes.


I upgraded the software on my iPhone and my Yahoo Calendar stopped syncing via CalDav

Here's what I did to fix the problem.  I got the answer from this forum post.

Delete CalDav Yahoo calendar sync profile in the iPhone settings.
Go to Safari settings and click Clear History and Clear Cookies and Data.
Turn iPhone off.
Turn iPhone on.
Re-add you Yahoo Calendar CalDav account.

To re-add your Yahoo Calendar CalDav account:

Go to Settings
Click Mail Contacts, Calendars
Click Add Account Option
Click Other
Click Add CalDAV Account
Server: https://caldav.calendar.yahoo.com
Enter you Yahoo user name and password.
Click Save.


Does the Apple Watch need an iPhone to be on the latest iOS to pair?

I had the identical issue today. Updating my phone to iOS 11.3 resolved the issue.


Prevent users from deleting iBooks from iPad

Settings → General → scroll down → Restrictions → Enable Restrictions → create passcode and enter it again when prompted → write it down somewhere → toggle Deleting Apps to OFF.


Do I need to get a license to use OS X system font in my app?

No. If the font is not bundled, there is no need to license.


How can you disable the low battery warnings for bluetooth devices?

I don't mind the alert or warning, but I do mind the weeks of having a blinking icon in my Menubar.  Here's what I did in Terminal:

$ cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/Bluetooth.menu/Contents/Resources/
$ sudo cp lowbatt.pdf lowbatt.backup.pdf
$ sudo cp BlueTooth_Connected.pdf lowbatt.pdf

This replaces the low battery icon with the same connected icon.  I assume the icon is still "blinking" in that it's switching one for the other, but since they're now the same, you don't notice.

Now I get the 20%, 10%, 5% alerts, but no annoying blink.

This is in Lion.  It's likely that system updates and perhaps even Mountain Lion will undo this, but it can probably be reapplied after updates are performed.

For Mountain Lion, the relevant files are named:

Bluetooth_Low_Battery.pdf
Bluetooth_Connected.pdf


Can't launch Finder window from terminal on Mojave

Not able to reproduce the error as I have access to Catalina's and High Sierra's macs but not Mojave. But you may want to try if updating permissions for your Terminal.app and iTerm.app resolved the issue:

System Preferences> Security&Privacy> Privacy> add both apps to "Accessibility" and "Automation" lists
Deleting & re-adding them could also help (it worked for me a few weeks back, re-enabling osascript assistive access to the system UI for my terminal scripts that had suddenly stopped working).

Nota & Disclaimer: control panel headings above are Catalina's - High Sierra has only "Accessibility" - Mojave's should be close enough though -- Obviously changing any such Security settings is done at your own risks etc... -- while I did not have to do it in my case, logoff/logon could help ensure the permissions are properly applied.


OS X Finder customize default folder display

You can do it on a per folder basis. From the folders you care about - I would imagine this is just your users and root harddrive on your desktop. That'll cover most cases.

Open them, and hit either command-J, or View -> Show View Options.

If you're in Column mode, you'll see a check box to then alway show the folder in that mode.

If you always start finder from a couple of pre-defined places, eg. your desktop double-clicking your drive, this ought to cover your most frequent usage.


If you were looking to test the video card status I believe you could restart your iMac, hold the Option key right before the chime, and choose the Recovery disk. From there you can run system diagnostics.


Is MotionX GPS capable of caching Google Maps Tiles?

From the MotionX GPS manual:

  Unfortunately due to Microsoft restrictions on Bing maps and Google restrictions on Google maps, these maps types can't be cached or stored onboard. By contrast, MotionX road and terrain maps may be cached and downloaded.


You can repartition the disk with gpt and format the partition with newfs_hfs:

Open Terminal.app and to get an overview enter:

diskutil list

Get the partition table of the disk in question (below I assume the disk to partition is disk2):

sudo gpt -r show disk2

Destroy the GUID partition table and create a new one:

diskutil umountDisk disk2
sudo gpt destroy disk2
sudo gpt create disk2

If the disk previously was formatted as a FAT volume, a new GUID partition table can't be created because the PMBR turns into an MBR (which blocks the GPT creation) and you have to overwrite it first:

diskutil umountDisk disk2
sudo gpt destroy disk2
diskutil umountDisk disk2
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk2 count=1
sudo gpt create disk2

Get the new partition table:

sudo gpt -r show disk2

Now create a new partition with gpt. Depending on the block size of your disk you may have to align the partition. Disks with a block size of 512 Bytes have to be aligned. On disks with a block size of 4096 Bytes you can use the first free block (block nr. 6) and the size of the free space.

Example (a 2.2 TB disk with a block size of 512 Bytes):

       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34  4292870077
  4292870111          32         Sec GPT table
  4292870143           1         Sec GPT header

Do the math and align your volume to 4k blocks. This means: the start block and the size is divisible through 8 (and has to fit in 4292870071 blocks in my example because the lowest recommended start block is 40). Create a new partition:

sudo gpt add -i 1 -b 40 -s 4292870064 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk2

with i: index position (usually 1 for the first partition); b: start block; s: size in blocks and t: type of partition (here HFS+ = 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC).

Example (a 6.0 TB disk with a block size of 4096 Bytes):

      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2          4         Pri GPT table
          6  976746229
  976746235          4         Sec GPT table
  976746239          1         Sec GPT header

sudo gpt add -i 1 -b 6 -s 976746229 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk2

Format the partition with newfs_hfs (-v name: name the volume; -J: journaled):

 sudo newfs_hfs -v test -J /dev/rdisk2s1

The volume will be mounted automatically. Else enter diskutil mount disk2s1.

Be warned: checking the disk with Disk Utility will yield:

  Problems were found with the partition map which might prevent booting...

and with diskutil verifyDisk disk2

  Started partition map verification on disk2
  Checking prerequisites
  Checking the partition list
  Problems were found with the partition map which might prevent booting
  Error: -69770: Partition map check failed because no slices were found


Give this a try.

sudo find /private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.iconservices -exec rm -rf {} \;
sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store
killall Dock

After running the commands, I had to remove the app from the dock and add it again. It worked for me but YMMV.


Monitor and MacBook Pro not on speaking terms anymore

Reboot the Mac with the monitor cable connected. That sometimes fixes it.


I cannot mount .dmg file for VMWare Fusion: Protocol wrong type for socket ERROR

If you can't even mount the .DMG file it is unlikely to have anything to do with VMWare or the software they put in the DMG file. Usually errors when mounting a DMG file occur due to a damaged download. Though it is possible the file they placed on their servers is corrupted at the source.

Try downloading with a different browser or even use WGET in the terminal and see what your results are.


How can I clear an iPad from another company's DEP?

The organization that owns the device is normally the only entity that can release it. You can watch the traffic without impacting it but not really get around the enrollment process without a solid jailbreak and some network skills.

Can iPad SSL/TLS traffic be inspected during DEP enrollment?

I would start with network packet capture / tracing to confirm which entity has convinced Apple to exert DEP control by logging DNS lookups or packet capture and not even pester Apple if you can't document your request in specific detail.

If there is a clear mistake, the other third party will they will likely want to help you out or at least learn more about this hardware.

you either will be reporting a stolen device to them or they will learn they messed up releasing that device.
It’s also remotely possible there was a serial number mixup and they can contact Apple with you to fix that.

Some day they could need someone else’s help and they wouldn’t want to manage your machine or be liable for infringing on your rights if they know hey are improperly managing someone else’s hardware. It's just the right thing to do if you ended up with someone else's registration in your console.

Next, if you really had to you would work with Apple and be clearer and more thorough and patient than the first time you asked for help. You will be seen as potentially someone looking to steal someone else’s hardware since Apple goes to pretty long lengths to validate a company before they allow DEP and the odds of mistakes that can’t be caught are low.

Worst thing - even if you accomplish your goal, I doubt you will ever be able to DEP that serial that was enrolled once and released. I’ve never heard of an exception to this. Maybe Apple would budge, but the warnings the releasing company sees before they release are quite dire and clear there is no going back once they rescind your/their one time DEP enrollment of a serialized product Apple sold to a validated business account.

You are likely going to have a long, hard  and unproductive experience with either a third party or Apple without specific documented proof a mistake was made. You might get what you want, but the desk is stacked against you accomplishing this for some really well considered reasons.


Where does Time Machine store its cache? Mine is sometimes corrupted

There could be any number of different factors involved in why Time Machine is doing a full scan after using Windows/Bootcamp. From what you describe it seems out of sync, as if your system is telling Time Machine 'this volume is not like it was, so do a full scan'. One of the first things that might give you an idea of what is going on would be to open Console immediately after Time Machine kicks in with 'Preparing...'. By observing fseventsd, system.log, and backupd you should be able to get a better picture of what might be taking place. You can type any of those terms in the search box of Console to see a consolidated list of those events.

This article is also an excellent in-depth guide to Time Machine; it covers just about everything you could imagine, so take a look.


How to identify iPad models: MLQ82FDA and MLYM2FDA?

MLQ82FDA is a 9.7 Inch iPad Pro / Wifi + Cellular / 256 GB / Gold / Year 2016

https://www.singular.com.cy/apple-9.7-inch-ipad-pro-wi-fi-cellular-tablet-256gb-9.7-ips-2048-x-1536-4g-gold.html

MLYM2FDA is a 9.7 Inch iPad Pro / WiFi + Cellular / 256 GB / Rose Gold / Year 2016

http://pc-tablet.pl/tablet-apple-ipad-pro-9-7-256gb-lte-mlym2fda,3161.html

Your A number can be found by going to Settings -> About then look for Model, then tap the MP number to switch it to an A number.


How is a large, spread out company supposed to work with the iOS Developer Program?

A $99 "company" developer membership allows the administrator of the account to set up many "developer" accounts. You should get the administrator of that account (whoever set it up originally, most likely) to create accounts for each of your developers.

You might need to share the admin account for things like provisioning and app submission, but for most of your daily work, you can have your own login that shares the developer membership.


The system preference panes will not load

Sometimes it's just enough to quit the System Preferences app. Check if the process was ended well, i.e. use Activity Monitor (also to quit "System Preferences" app). In my recent case it was not necessary to force quit, just select the process and quit was enough.
Alternatively Force Quit if System Preferences is open and in the Doc, just do a secondary click on the System Preferences icon, hit [alt] key "Quit" will change got "Force Quit" and click that.
After restarting the app the preference pane (in my case time machine pane) could be loaded as expected.
Lately it happened, that the described method didn't work, after force quit I still couldn't open the preference pane. I found that waiting a little (few minutes) before reopening helped, because when I was not able to reopen the pane I searched for a different solution, coming back to System Preferences – without doing anything else – was able to open the desired pane.


Copy directory from "Get Info" in Yosemite?

Take a look here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6610989

One of the suggested answers - drag file into Terminal window or Safari address bar.


What is the best approach to ejecting disk while in sleep mode, scheduled?

I think the Energy Saver suggestion is a good place to start:

 » System Preferences » Energy Saver » Schedule and set it for, say, 30 minutes before you want to leave for work.

However, I would not schedule it to go back to sleep unless you know that it has actually succeeded in ejecting the disk. Otherwise you might have the disk not eject for some reason, and then if you remove the drive, you'll get that terrible message about ejecting a drive improperly.

So, let's say that you want to leave for work at 8:00 a.m.

Set Energy Saver to wake the computer at 7:30 a.m.

Then I would use Keyboard Maestro to run a script at 7:35 a.m. to unmount the drive. (You can schedule specific times for macros in Keyboard Maestro.)

The first step of the macro would be a shell script to unmount the drive.

I have a shell script to do this already, so I'm sharing it here. You can add a shell script as a step of a Keyboard Maestro macro.

All you'd need to do is change the DRIVE="/Volumes/Time Machine" line to reflect where your Time Machine drive mounts.

#!/bin/zsh -f

    ## Change this to wherever your Time Machine drive mounts
DRIVE="/Volumes/Time Machine"

    ## Change this to however many times you want to try before
    ## the script considers itself to have failed.
MAX_ATTEMPTS="100"

    ## Only change this if you know you need to
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/bin

    ## initialize the counter. Don't change this :-)
COUNT=0

    ## This `while` loop will keep going until the drive no longer appears at the mount
    ## point, or we exceed the number of attempts we defined above.
while [[ -d "$DRIVE" ]]
do
        # increment counter
    ((COUNT++))

        # check to see if we have exceeded maximum attempts
    if [ "$COUNT" -gt "$MAX_ATTEMPTS" ]
    then

        echo "Exceeded '$MAX_ATTEMPTS' trying to eject '$DRIVE'."

            ## This will cause the script to fail
            ## which should cause the Keyboard Maestro macro to fail
            ## so it won't go to sleep, so you'll know that you
            ## have to manually eject the drive
        exit 1
    fi

        # don't sleep the first time through the loop
    [[ "$COUNT" != "1" ]] && sleep 10

        # This is where we try to eject the drive
    diskutil eject "$DRIVE"

done

exit 0

The second step of the macro is a built-in feature in Keyboard Maestro to Put Computer To Sleep.

However, if the first step of the macro fails (i.e. if the drive does NOT eject) then the computer will not go back to sleep.


Just go to your contact via contacts app icon. Select desired contact then click edit in top right corner and then scroll down to very bottom and click delete contact, voilá!


macOS Catalina beachball appears when I use TextEdit or Preview apps

Hi I did some more Google searching, and so the answer for this bug I was facing is to Disable the "Dropbox Finder Extensions" in the "Extensions" section in System Preference.

It seems the Finder features of Dropbox (like green dot next to filename in finder etc.) was causing beachballs in using TextEdit & Preview. Now it's been fixed for me.

Since it's a bug, I hope Dropbox & Apple will fix it.


Is there an equation in Numbers that will give me the sum of numbers based on a separate column?

I figured it out. The method is called =SUMIF(). I am so happy. :)


Apple says I'm signing an app with old OS version, and I'm not

I found it ... I know this answer seems crazy, but it's the solution.

When you bundle the app, the folder YourApp.app/Contents/PlugIns/jdk1.{your_version}.jdk/Contents/  dissapears, so you have just to recover it from the JDK home, and the bundle "will looks fine" to Apple.

So:

cp -r /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.{your_version}/Contents/MacOS YourApp.app/Contents/PlugIns/jdk{your_version}.jdk/Contents/

And it's working !

Thank you Apple for a message so clear :-P


Keep MacBook on when closed without keyboard and mouse

I would connect a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse if you can’t have physical cables connected.

This function is in firmware, so you’d need to engineer a solution to change Apple’s conditions for closed clamshell mode.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201834


Mac App Store not working on macOS Mojave 10.14 Beta 1 (18A293u)

With latest beta 2 update 10.14 Beta (18A314h) issue is resolved.

Update macOS to latest 10.14 Beta (18A314h)
Open App Store
Click on Store -> Sign Out in menu
Quit App Store
Open App Store again
Sign in

After this I could update apps and initiate new downloads.


Resources for programming a text based interface in Swift?

It is very common to create such text interface application using the ncurses library.

You can use ncurses from Swift programs by importing it:

import Darwin.ncurses

Then you can follow ordinary ncurses tutorials to get a grasp on how to build up user interfaces using ncurses.

In particular, you'll probably find the following tutorial helpful. It is on how to use ncurses with Swift - though on Linux. The techniques explained are exactly the same on OS X, except that you need to use the aforementioned import instead of loading the Linux version of the library:

"Ncurses with Swift on Linux"


Why is "Real Memory" greater than "Memory" for kernel_task process?

The kernel is special - it's the micro system that actually allocates memory and runs the virtual memory. You can just assume 3.60 GB is what your kernel has claimed and that 1.86 GB of that corresponds to what the task itself needs and the rest is the overhead / allocations to support all the demands made on the Mach kernel.

Every other line in Activity monitor behaves as one might expect, adding up fairly clearly once you ignore the kernel numbers:

Total virtual memory allocation is always the largest. Most of that is unallocated / not mapped physically and not in any category listed.
Real Mem is the non-shared and non-compressed allocation to that task.
Compressed Memory is the part of the total memory that has been compressed before being actively stored.
Private and Shared are both real memory usage but indicate if other processes might also need or be responsible for that allocation against the total.

For a larger discussion of the kernel_task, this question has some great links and discussion of how kernel_task is so very different than the rest of the processes you see on macOS.

What exactly does kernel_task do?


Is there a way to view Game Center information on OS X?

For the moment it only works on iOS. I would assume there will be plans at some point for Apple to release it to the Mac, however nothing has been mentioned publicly. Apple has also not provided any web interface for it, and I suspect if they do it will be part of iCloud.


My question is, if my logic board was truly faulty, would it have been
  possible to boot up when I got it back from the store?

Because, not everything is absolute.

In other words, you may have an intermittent failure of some component.  I't possible it's a failing capacitor, resistor or even IC (Integrated Circuit, aka "chip").   There may be dry (broken or otherwise faulty) solder joints.  You may even have electrical "glue" that has become dry/cracked and is contributing to the intermittent functionality.

Without putting "hands on" it would be impossible to accurately diagnose and/or repair.  However, IMO, unless you can source a replacement logic board on the cheap, fixing an almost 9 year old machine is going to be cost prohibitive.


To be able to see what your trackpad "sees", you can use FingerMgmt.

As for your problem, do you have tap-to-click on? If so, does turning it off solve the problem?


How to show dock on all monitors in Catalina?

This isn’t how the dock works. Apple puts it on one screen only.

You can do some setting with mission control and hiding, so you might be happy with that.

How to get a dock on multiple monitors
Is it possible to have my dock visible on all monitors in El Capitan?
show dock permanently on the primary display only or simultaneously on both displays

You could use a third party app to make a launcher window on multiple screens or move to using a keyboard based launcher like LaunchBar or Alfred.


How to use Mac OS X "Per-user screen sharing" from a Windows PC?

The trick to doing this appears to be the following: under Computer Settings you need to enable VNC viewers may control screen with password but NOT enable Anyone may request permission to control screen.  You then enter a control password which grants access to the login screen, and use your own local username and password to log in.


Can I get an alert when my iPhone 5S is unplugged?

You can reach that with the shortcut-app by creating an automation:

Open Shortcut-App and create a new Automation (click +)
Choose "Create Personal Automation"
Scroll the page down and select "Charger"
Choose "Is Disconnected" and click "Next"

Click button "+ Add Action"
Select "Show Notification", findable through the search field
Write the show notification as example "Is Disconnected from Power", then "Next"

Deselect "Ask Before Running" if this shortcut should be triggered automatically
Click "Done" and your shortcut is finished and executable


Error downloading YouTube video using youtube-dl

For some reason youtube-dl has cert issues. I have always found a solution by using --no-check-certificate argument.

From the man page:

--no-check-certificate
              Suppress HTTPS certificate validation

Should really say "Ignores HTTPS certificate validation"...


Macbook Pro keeps waking from sleep during the night and draining battery

Broadly speaking, what I would do next is as follows:

1. Quit all applications and put the MBP to sleep overnight. Then,

If it's still draining battery power significantly, it's time to reset the System Management Controller (see below)
If it didn't drain the battery much during the night, then proceed the following night with only two or three apps running.

If it significantly drains the battery, then you've narrowed it down to one of those apps, so repeat the process until you identify the culprit.
If it doesn't drain battery, then repeat the process the following night with a different group of apps and repeat the process until you narrow down the app(s) causing the problem.

2. Reset the SMC

Fully shut down your MBP.
Press and hold the power button for at least 10 seconds
Let go of the power button and wait 5 seconds
Power up your MBP again

Once you've reset the SMC test your MBP again. If it's still misbehaving, reset the SMC again but with the following steps instead:

Fully shut down your MBP.
Press and hold the right shift key and the left option and control keys for 7 seconds before then also pressing and holding the power button (or Touch ID button) down for another 7 seconds (i.e. the keys will end up being held down for 14 seconds, the power button for 7 seconds)
Let go of all three keys and the power button
Wait 5 seconds
Power up your MBP again

Now test your MBP again. If you're still having problemss, let us know.


iPhone - how to disable Shake for undoing read/unread email?

Open the settings app
Swipe down slightly
Enter undo in the search field
Tap “Swipe to undo”
Make your choice

The setting is global and not app specific.
Since you didn’t list actual troubleshooting steps, once you conclude you can suppress this by disabling it globally and that it returns.
Look for other differences for your experience. Different accelerometer sensitivities, different actual accelerations or pursue software resets.

power cycle it normally
force reset the device
Leave the undo off for a day globally
restore the device
swap or repair the hardware

Being organized is the only way to troubleshoot a frustrating situation like you mention.


iCloud storage showing data for Pages but no documents are saved - what is it?

There’s no harm in cleaning up iCloud Documents. I go to the web interface since then I’m 100% sure I see what’s actually in iCloud and not what’s temporarily synced to a device - sometimes a device can lag or get stuck. Cleaning the source is my best advice.

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/

Before you delete - review recently deleted items and purge them if you want. Then delete all the files you don’t want. Once that’s done on the server side, review that each Mac and iOS device sees the delete or clean out local copies they have that didn’t sync up correctly.

In your images - you can safely clear the data, but if you do the math 101 KB divided by 5.0 GB is 20 parts per million (25 ppm if you include all the other documents as well). It’s not even a rounding error.


Yes, it is most likely that this is a hardware problem - although you couldn't really call it a "bug".

As this happened right after the phone was subjected to water, and none of the usual resets of the phone's software helped, it is most likely water damaged. You might think that an inch of water isn't much, but when you go kayaking that water isn't "pure water". It is likely that it has damaged the hardware somehow.

I would take it to Apple or a repair shop to get an estimate on the costs to fix it!


Upgrade direct install software from App Store

No, unfortunately this is not possible.

You can only update software within the App Store that was download directly from the App Store.


What is Visual Studio Code? Is it an efficient tool for Swift Development?

Visual Studio Code is a multi-language IDE and text editor, much like Atom.

Among it's strenghts there's it being highly modular, with plenty of plug-ins so you can build the best IDE for your specific needs.

It has gained quite a lot of traction within the StackExchange community, based on the latest survey.

While it's true that there are plenty of Swift plugins for VSCode, I have never used it for this purpose so far, although I enjoy working on it on other languages and as my generally go-to text editor.


iPhone 7 — Antenna stripes change their color

I haven't tried it on an iPhone, but I'd bet melamine foam would work.


Visual Voicemail won't let me play back or adjust greeting

My Iphone 6 uses Verizon. I successfully changed VM greeting a couple of days ago then tried to change again the same day but none of the VM greeting buttons would work except cancel.  Called Verizon and they had me reset all settings. Still didn't work. The told me to re-set network settings and still didn't work.  The referred me to apple and I did a did a back up and restored using by back up.  Still didn't work. They wanted me to try to restore as new without the backup which I was reluctant to do.

Just deleted VMs and Delted VMs, and (for now) I'm able to record and change my VM greetings.  Thanks Kal-al


Disk Utility does not show OK message after Verify Disk

As stated above, this is a known bug issue. However, booting to the recovery partition (CMD + R while booting up) or by holding down Option to boot to a USB recovery drive (for those of us with home-brew FusionDrives who haven't gotten around to setting up a Recovery partition again), the process seems to complete without issue.


cannot see log items for connected ipad in console

And it turns out that clicking on the triangle containing the exclamation mark was the required step to make log messages start flowing.


Spotlight reports "Indexing and searching disabled" in Lion

I had the exact same problem, with all solutions above failing identically. Then I reexamined the directory listing for / and found a hidden file .metadata_never_index in the root directory. I removed this file and was able to turn spotlight on again with
mdutil -i on /.

mds is now reindexing the hard disk, all looks good for now.


Can I view a list of applications currently running background jobs in iOS?

The only option I have found is in Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh that shows all apps that are currently capable and enabled to do the refreshing. Unfortunately there is no indication of which one was active recently.


Recommendations for inter-app audio apps for GarageBand?

From WTF Is Inter-App Audio Apps?

Here’s a list of the apps that currently work with Inter-App Audio in Garageband:

Alchemy mobile
Amplitube (iPhone and iPad, paid and free versions)
Magellan
Nave
Yamaha TNR-i
Yamaha Mobile Sequencer
Yamaha Synth Arp & Drum Pad
AUFX:Space
NLogSynth Pro
iMini
Galileo Organ


How can I see the system status during boot?

You have to press cmd + v upon startup to see the boot output. Press this right after the chime.

If you want to make that permanent, you should probably do something along the lines of:

sudo nvram boot-args="-v"

To undo the above:

sudo nvram boot-args=

in the Terminal. (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app)

note: I haven’t tested the above commands, but I’m sure a google query will help you there if you want to make it permanent.


No, it is the path where you have created the pdfc symbolic link.
The command you ran was incomplete - you need to first replace /absolute/path/of/the/folder/script/ with the actual path to the pdfc symbolink link. In addition you must use the full command including >> ~/.bash_profile in order to actually get something saved in the bash profile.
Also, the 3rd line you quote is just wrong (also in Github itself), it should be
echo 'export PATH="/absolute/path/of/the/folder/script/:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

As you have already run the wrong command you'll need to edit your .bash_profile manually (e.g. with nano) to fix the wrong definition. Either source .bash_profile afterwards or open a new Terminal tab/window to load the new value.


Set OS X Server for remote-only administration

Unfortunately as long someone has physical access to hardware they can do pretty much anything with it. (depending upon they skills).

Your only semi safe solution would be to put it in a lock box.

Then set up password for log-in screen and password for idle (sleep mode).


Mail autocomplete is different for search and compose

The difference in autocomplete stems from the fact there is no “Mail knows about”. The lookup happens on two different sets of data:

Autocomplete in search happens on the Spotlight index of all received and sent mails in Mail.app’s database (since version 2 of Mail.app).
Autocomplete on compose happens on Mail.app’s potential recipients list, which is a compound of contacts with an email address in Addressbook and a list of previous recipients stored by Mail.app (a list you can see and edit under Window » Previous Recipients).

Notice the difference: search knows about people you have only received mail from, compose does not. Hence different autocomplete results.


Using Hazel or AppleScript to Convert Word to PDF

This AppleScript should do what you want:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15180576#15180576

You would need to have Word running, however, for this to work. It's not my code but I just tried it out as a service in Automator with 10.9 and Office 2011 and it works both with a single and multiple Word docs.

I suppose using the actual Word app is the only way to ensure correct layout but using a command-line Word-to-PDF converter could be done, too.


sudo rm /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postfix.master.plist  will prevent postfix from starting at launch and being daemonized (if it has been installed in a usual way). This will effectively prevent postfix from running. However, removal of all files and config is another matter. If you installed using a package manager then that’s the way to remove it. Otherwise you have to search your computer and remove postfix-related files.

The unload comando just stops a service from running but, as you have noticed, starts again at boot because the plist file is still present.

You probably don’t need postfix on your Mac. It’s mostly for use for sending mail from a server (smtp server)—Gmail, yes, does that for you. You might have installed postfix so PHP can send emails, but for development you could try a faux postfix that logs instead of sends like Mailhog.


How to move books from iBooks on my iPhone with iTunes on Mac?

Did you buy them from the iTunes Store? If so, they should sync automatically via iTunes into iBooks on your Mac. If you got them externally to iTunes, then you will have to separately move them to your Mac first before using iTunes on your Mac. Can you mail them to yourself and import them into iBooks on your Mac? It does matter which version of iTunes and OSX you are using as the behaviour of iTunes and iBooks has changed between releases, however the fundamental point is that you need to move them independently of iTunes to your Mac first.


How do you install playground books on iPad?

Ok, it turns out that if you use AirDrop to send the Playground book to yourself, iOS offers to open it in the Swift Playgrounds app.


iOS 7 Hide Quoted Messages in a Mail Thread

As of iOS 10, the default behavior is for quotes at the end to be hidden under a "See More" button.


iOS 8.1.2 and Outlook 2010 Calendar Sync Issue

Settings > General > Mail, Contacts, And Calendars > Scroll to the bottom where it says Default Calendar and make sure the "On This iPhone" option isn't checked. If it is then you need to select the appropriate calendar for this be it your FIRM or Corporate Calendar. An option your IT Administrator or if your FIRM or Corporation requires to have an app for would have been preloaded and installed already on the iPhone or iOS Configuration


You can install Julia using cask:

$ brew cask install julia

$ brew cask info julia
julia: 0.4.2
Julia
http://julialang.org/
Not installed
https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask/blob/master/Casks/julia.rb
==> Contents
  Julia-0.4.2.app (app)
  Julia-0.4.2.app/Contents/Resources/julia/bin/julia (binary)


Problem downloading large app using iPad 2

In my experience, when this happens it's usually down to the fact that the download process failed (for whatever reason) and iOS will not allow you to recommence the download or try starting it again from scratch. It's not so much to do with a software imposed download limitation.

There's only a limit over 3G (20MB) and a general limit on app sizes (2GB).

The only thing I can suggest is trying to delete the app from the home screen and restarting the download (although I'm doubtful this will work).

Otherwise, you will have to connect to iTunes and install as it suggests. For large apps, I tend to do this due to problems like you have experienced and because it's usually quicker!


Cannot disable three finger tap look up after migrating to a new computer

Have you tried deleting ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad.plist or running defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad TrackpadThreeFingerTapGesture -bool false?


The common issue with Bluetooth Audio and mac OS

create an aggregate device via audio midi setup and do not include the your headset input channel in there, then make that device to be default.

that's an example setup, as long as you do not include your headphones input and use the build-in microphone, it should not trigger the SCO codec upon bluetooth initialisation. that generally means if you want to listen to music and talk it will use the laptop microphone, not the headset one.

hope that helps.


Can iOS receive gmail's instant (within several seconds) push notification for email?

You cannot have Push notifications for a POP3 email account. The only supported mail accounts for push email notifications are iCloud/MobileMe and Exchange with ActiveSync support.


Can I get a 4G data plan for my unlocked iPhone 5 in the US?

T-Mobile's 3G/4G coverage for an iPhone 5 is better than a year ago but still limited so you are rolling the dice. They just released a carrier update for the iPhone that will give an iPhone 5 access to some of their 4G network. But it's still early days and the usefulness will greatly depend on your location.

T-Mobile also offers a pay-as-you go plan where talk and text are charged as used and data can be activated on a day-to-day basis.

StraightTalk is another option for an unlocked iPhone but is only 3G. $45/month for unlimited talk, text, and data.  As usual, "unlimited" means "secret limits" that we can arbitrarily use to kick heavy users off.

The big advantage of T-Mobile is that you can walk into a T-Mobile store and get it set-up. AT&T is still officially restricting the use of non-contract iPhones on their network and walking into a store will be a bust, but they don't actively hunt them down so GoPhone is an unofficial option.  You have to buy a GoPhone SIM and cut it down to size but it will work.  Unofficial and a bit of a PITA but the option exists. You can buy pre-cut cards on Amazon but getting one in a store is a bit trickier.

http://www.dargadgetz.com/how-to-use-iphone-5-on-att-gophoneprepaid-with-4g-data-speeds-payasyougo/

I suspect this gives 4G/HSPA+ and not 4G/LTE.


Activate iCloud but keep calendar private

iCloud will automatically sync all calendars not located on another server (such as a Google Calendar). It will take a few minutes to sync all the info to iCloud, then it will be available across all devices. Nothing stays local when iCloud is involved. It goes to the cloud, and syncs when it detects changes.


ImageMagick can do this:

convert 1.png 2.png -append result.png

Alignment options can be (optionally) specified using the -gravity switch,

-gravity East align the right edges
-gravity West align the left edges
-gravity center align the centers

Note: using +append instead of -append will stitch the images together horizontally, i.e. side-by-side rather than one above the other.


how to buy apple developer membership outside US?

Why are you trying to register as an Apple Developer in the US? You only need the one Apple ID, so assuming your Apple ID is based in the UAE you should be registering from there.

Regardless of where you're registered you'll still be able to sell your apps in all App Stores.

If the registration process takes you to the US site, you'll find you can click on the US flag icon at the bottom of the screen. This will open up a screen displaying all countries and their flags. You should find that the first grouping is for Africa, Middle East, and India. You can select United Arab Emirates from there.


Using Lightning headphones in my Dell laptop

You would need a USB to Lightening adapter for that. The newer Dell laptops do come with USB-C port adapters.


How is the Apple Watch connected to the Internet?

From the "Apple Watch User Guide"

  Apple Watch uses Bluetooth® wireless technology to connect to its paired iPhone and uses the iPhone for many wireless functions. Apple Watch can’t configure new Wi-Fi networks on its own, but it can connect to Wi-Fi networks you’ve set up on the paired iPhone.

  If your Apple Watch and iPhone are on the same network but aren’t connected by Bluetooth, you can also do the following on Apple Watch without iPhone:

  Send and receive messages using iMessage
  Send and receive Digital Touch messages
  Use Siri

The watch is using the Wi-Fi settings from you paired iPhone to access the internet.  As stated above it can connect to networks you have set on the iPhone.  The Bluetooth will connect to the phone and pass data back and forth.


MBP Boot Camp Windows 8 brightness issue

It appears that there is an Adaptive Brightness feature in Windows 8 that messes with the overall brightness of the MBP

If you just installed Windows 8 on your laptop and the screen won’t
stay at the brightness level you want, it’s probably because the
adaptive brightness feature isn’t working right on your system. Here’s
how to disable it.

Open up the Windows desktop with Win + D, click the power management
icon in the tray, and then choose More power options from the menu.
Once here, click the Change plan settings link on the selected
plan.
Then click the Change advanced power settings link.
And now, browse down to Display > Enable adaptive brightness, and
change the settings there to Off.

Naturally, it would be best to have the feature actually work, so you
could make sure to update your drivers. If you still want to disable,
here’s how to do it.
Just so we’re clear, here’s how to change the brightness on your
Windows 8 laptop… hit the Win+I shortcut key combination (that’s a
capital i), and then you’ll see the brightness control right there.

Disable Windows 8 Adaptive Brightness


I took a look at the app store and I found a few apps that can sync with Firefox and some other browsers.  Below are some details.

i-Pusher ($2.99, no ratings): Submit various content from your favorite desktop browser into your i-Device in one click...you will instantly receive a link, text, image or youtube video link on your mobile device. Personal Note: You do have to install the appropriate extension in your desktop browser.

Firefox Home (Free, 3/5 stars) Firefox Home Provides access to your desktop history, bookmarks and open tabs on your iPhone.  Personal Note: Not a web browser itself.  I think this is close to home of what you need.  I played with this before and I was able to continue browsing my opened tabs on my desktop Firefox using its Firefox Sync feature. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/firefox-home/id380366933?mt=8

360 Web Browser | Download Manager and Firefox Sync (99¢, 4/5 stars) Personal Note: This is actually a third party browser with many desktop like functionality like add ons and download managers with many configuration settings. It uses Firefox Sync, found in Settings in the app.  I just reread its description and apparently it can also do Flash Videos using a CC Plugin. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/360-web-browser-download-manager/id387737097?mt=8


How to suspend a virtual machine using AppleScript (when hibernating the Mac)?

Sleep/wake cannot trigger scripts. EventScripts, although it is a very impressive program. it not fit this purpose it does NOT actually appear to be able to trigger scripts quickly enough before your Mac goes to sleep.

but there are many third party solutions. For example,  sleepwatcher


Implications of using a USB SSD drive to run VM images off

USB 3.0 supports UASP which allows for TRIM

Re: enclosures - If you're using an external enclosure, the chipset must be able to pass through TRIM commands to the drive.  So without that, everything is a moot point.  And when connected in this manner, I would venture the drive would probably not even be recognized by the system as an SSD.

Question - can't you just upgrade your internal SSD to a larger capacity?


Group Significant locations by date instead of location

Unfortunately, this can't be changed and I don't know a way to retrieve this data.

There is an app that does this. Find My Family, Friends, Phone. Whilst the main use is family tracking it can be used to see location history. It offers 7 days history and 30 if you pay.

Another app that offers this is Google Maps. It offers a Your Time Line feature. You can see a history of each day. While not listing the places like iOS it is very similar.


Personal Hotspot crashed, now unavailable

Personal hotspot only depends on the carrier and the OS of the device.

Assuming you have a backup (and it won't get overwritten during testing and activation of your newly wiped phone), you can restore the phone and set it up as new.

If that fixes the issue - you can then know it was software corruption. You'll have to decide if you want to slowly delete things on the phone after restoring from your backup or just start new and set it up again from zero, but you'll have determined that the carrier settings and the hardware are working.

Conversely, if it fails after a new setup - focus on hardware and the carrier for support.


Change color of balloons and text in Message.app

In OSX Yosemite colors are blue (for iMessages) and green (for SMS). There is no longer the ability to change these; Macs now look like iOS devices.

Hard way: (backup first!)

For Yosemite modify CSS here:

/System/Library/Messages/PlugIns/Balloons.transcriptstyle/Contents/Resources/balloons-modern.css

For El Captain it's now located in:

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SocialUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources

But one needs to either disable rootless mode or to use a union file system mount to map the file over without rootless.

Hope this will help.


Switching from a Mac Mini HTPC to an Apple TV: what solution for watching these mkv files?

I'd recommend the Plex approach, not the Airplay solution.  If you can handle the jailbreak (ATV2 only!), it's the best approach out there for non-iTunes movies on your ATV.  And, I hate to say it here, consider the Roku, which is really cheap, officially supports Plex, and should be able to play anything you throw at it.


Does iTunes Match renewals use Gift Card credit?

Yes, you can!

According to http://support.apple.com/en-us/ht4914:

"You can use store credit to pay for your iTunes Match subscription; however, you must have a valid payment method on file at the time of sign up."


How to change NTP server in airport express?

Although the GUI has lost a lot of functionality, there is a workaround.

In AU, select the device and click 'edit'. Under the File menu export the config, which you can then edit, and import it using the same menu. The relevant tag is

<key>ntSV</key>
<string>time.apple.com</string>

You will need to be very careful with your editing or you may render it unbootable! You will need to restart for the config change to take effect. I've done this with a Time Capsule: I expect that this is possible with Airport Express too, but do not have access to one to experiment with.


Inbound video streaming over lightning port accessory

No, there's no such reason. The problem with the EyeTV Mobile has nothing to with the fact that it is streaming video as such. It simply means that limits are applied as to how much electrical power the accessory can consume (i.e. a limit on the numbers of mA that it can draw).


Cannot kill process shown in parenthesis

The actual display of a process between (…) means this process was detached from its controlling terminal (here ttys002). This means that ^C, ^\, ^S, ^Z don't have anymore effect on it. It's behaving in daemon mode. This also means you can't send it a hangup either.

The correct way to deal with this case if unwanted, is to get
the number of its parent process with:

ps lw | egrep '[ ](2006|PID)'

and kill it with a hangup signal:

kill -HUP xxxx

where xxxx is the process ID of the parent process.


Manage external USB drive in iTunes as if it was an iPod

The venerable Doug’s Scripts for iTunes has many AppleScript to export and export/convert songs in case you wanted them to be MP3 or re-encoded when you export them. Also available is an inexpensive app to automate this even better than the scripts:

https://dougscripts.com/apps/m3unifyapp.php


I lost all my calendar events after updating to iOS 7

Do you use iCloud or another cloud service to store your calendars? If yes, it may be related to your sync settings. The standard is to synchronize only events up to 30 days back. If you want to change to another period, go to the calendar section of the system settings and choose a sync period there.


How to delete all local TimeMachine snapshots

In Terminal, execute this small script:

for d in $(tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates | grep "-"); do sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots $d; done

The script lists all snaphosts and deletes all of them in a loop.


Is it possible to install an SSD and/or another hard drive after purchase in a 27" iMac?

On the immediate downsides - You will need special tools and be handling some delicate parts. Also, there is concern that the temperature sensing since the 2009 model iMac causes the fans to run faster with non-apple drives.

If you really want to get dust between the LCD and the front glass on a brand new mac and take the chance of ripping a tiny ribbon cable - just do some research at ifixit.com or talk with a local tech that works on new iMacs a lot. Do also research fan control and know if you are not planning on an Apple specification drive to install.

My guess is Apple SSD are expensive because the parts are cherry picked to be the best of a lot (more so than the SSD consumers buy) and perhaps loaded with custom firmware and generally have temp sensors specific to the mac. I could be totally wrong, but even if you feel the drives are overpriced, Apple installing any SSD is better than a consumer due to the labor for for installing them is almost nil as they are installed at the most economical time - at assembly.

If you can't afford it now - why not expand to an external SSD over firewire or ThunderBolt later. They are totally silent and small. It just seems the risks of DIY on a new mac make it better for most people to pay a trained tech to do the install.


Resetting User Account Password - This will work so long as you do not have a firmware/'EFI' password set on the machine.

1) Boot into your Recovery Partition holding down command + R at the startup chime

2) Select Terminal from your Utilities Menu Bar

3) Type the following bolded command in: resetpassword

4) From the new window that appears, select your user account and proceed.

5) Type in the new password and confirm the new password

6) Click Save, close this pane and quit Utilities

7) Select your boot volume when presented with "choose startup disk" and reboot your machine


How to delete pre-installed apps in Catalina?

Catalina introduced changes to the way the file system files are stored, i.e. it puts them on a separate read-only APFS volume. The pre-installed apps are also found on this partition. More details can be found in this ars technica article. In short, you need a slightly different method compared to previous versions to get at those pesky pre-installed apps.

(Information taken from this reddit thread)

Boot into recovery by holding cmd + R while the system is booting

Open up terminal (found in one of the menus at the top), and type the command csrutil disable. This will turn off the SIP

Reboot into Catalina

In terminal run sudo mount -uw /

You should now be able to delete the pre-installed apps. I used AppCleaner to do this. It will let you delete them, but you'll have to click remove twice.

Boot into recovery again and in the terminal type csrutil enable to re-enable the SIP. I’m not sure if this step is necessary as some things I’ve read suggest that it is automatically re-enabled, but that’s what I did.

You should now find that the apps are gone.

Note: I have found that the apps can reappear, I suspect this might be related to updates, but I don’t know. You should always install updates, but you might have to delete these apps again after updating.


Problem with mounting NTFS USB HDD via Tuxera in Lion

I had the same problem, and after a search over the web, I found the following updated package of macfuse that worked for me: http://www.tuxera.com/mac/macfuse-core-10.5-2.1.9.dmg


Copying Xcode installation from one Mac to another

I Wanted to close the loop on this. Yes, it works just fine. We create a .xip file of the installation and slap it on other boxes.


Is there a way to exactly position a window?

Here's an example AppleScript that sets the position of window 1 of Quick Time Player to {533, 118}, if it's running and the window exists.

if application "QuickTime Player" is running then
    try
        if (count windows of application "QuickTime Player") is greater than 0 then
            tell application "System Events" to set position of window 1 of application process "QuickTime Player" to {533, 118}
        end if
    end try
end if

This can be saved as a script or application or incorporated into an Automator workflow as a Service and assigned a keyboard shortcut, if you prefer.

Here's an example AppleScript that you can enter the {x, y} position info as a space separated value in a display dialog box:

if application "QuickTime Player" is running then
    try
        if (count windows of application "QuickTime Player") is greater than 0 then
            tell application "QuickTime Player"
                set theReply to (display dialog "Move window to position, e.g.: 533 118" default answer "533 118" buttons {"Cancel", "OK"} default button 2 with title "Enter Windows X Y Coordinates")
            end tell
            tell application "System Events" to set position of window 1 of application process "QuickTime Player" to {word 1 of text returned of theReply as integer, word 2 of text returned of theReply as integer}
        end if
    end try
end if

Note that you can set default answer "533 118" to default answer "", if you don't want a default value set.


I used to have tons of sync issues when attempting to use certain Exchange accounts with Mail.app and issues are still being reported with Yosemite:

see this discussion - https://discussions.apple.com/message/26903397#26903397

If you have to use a Microsoft account and you're running a mac, you might want to consider changing your mail client. The user above actually has gone back to using Outlook 2011 for compatibility.


How to find the list of icons that can be used in mac cli applications

The Terminal available in macOS is capable of displaying the Unicode encoded Emoji that are available on the system.

You can see a great list of these over at Emojipedia. While these are noted as being from iOS, generally Apple keeps the supported version of Unicode in sync between iOS and macOS.

I also found some great information about working with Emoji on macOS on NSHipster written by Mattt.


Erased /usr/bin/env on accident. How can I restore it?

Running brew install coreutils should install the GNU version of env.


I do not know how to disable the navigation bar on Safari for iOS. However, applications exist for iOS that may satisfy your requirement. You may want to search the internet for terms such as "kiosk browser ipad" or a similar query.

One of these applications is called Amtel Secure Browser Kiosk. I have never personally used it, but it is free.

  Amtel provides a secure restricted browser & kiosk application for iOS
  users. Browser policies can be configured such that only whitelisted
  links are made available to the end users. The application is designed
  to help IT departments at Healthcare organizations, Financial
  institutions, Education sector, Libraries, Hi-tech, Fleet management
  etc manage browser security on the iOS devices. The Administrator can
  customize the settings to stop blacklisted sites on the devices or
  allow only favorite sites on the browser. The kiosk mode is designed
  to give the users the benefits of mobile device technology with fewer
  distractions & security risks. The configuration of browser settings
  is done at Amtel Mobile Device Management console - MDM.


I use the standard print dialog: under Layout you can select how many pages you want on a sheet of paper, their order, and wether they are surrounded by a frame:

http://content.screencast.com/users/vilmoskoerte/folders/Jing/media/e286324f-535f-4108-84f5-35b02090c598/00000151.png

This seems to serve at least one of the requirements you state above ("print multiple pages of a document's printout per physical sheet"). The other requirement is easy to be met if your documents are PDF files (or converted to PDF before) using Preview.


Is there a built-in text-to-graphic utility for OS X Lion?

ImageMagick doesn't come with OS X, but it should though.

convert -background skyblue -border 10 -bordercolor skyblue -fill 'hsb(10%,50%,50%)' -font /Library/Fonts/Arial\ Narrow.ttf -pointsize 24 label:"some text" output.png

If you have to specify some more complex styles, using webkit2png might be easier.

echo "Test" > test.html
webkit2png test.html --clipwidth=55 --clipheight=35 --scale 1 -C


Why iPhone apps on iPad are scaled in Pixel Double mode instead of iPhone 4 Hi-Res mode?

It is likely to encourage developers to write native iPad apps instead of just relying on the higher resolution of retina artwork.


Turns out that I'm special and the issue wasn't with pf at all. The problem was that postfix wasn't started! It'd still be interesting to know a way to test port forwarding though if anybody knows a tool for that.


Can I set some sort of "never send error report" on an app that has to be force quit frequently?

Instead of force quit you could find the name of the process(es) you want to quit using Activity Monitor and then create a script that uses the kill command to get rid of them.

Some details: Chriswrites


Chrome for iOS keeps loggin out of reddit.com

Try logging in to reddit with HTTPS at pay.reddit.com

I can't say for sure if this will work, but at least it's something to try.

pay.reddit.com is HTTPS, not HTTP. Explanation: http://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1y9543/ive_seen_httpspayredditcomr_a_few_times_what/


Mac Mail can't send outgoing messages via GoogleMail

There appears to be a problem on Gmail's side with their SMTP servers. This seems to have afflicted all non-browser based email clients that rely on SMTP and is apparently affecting a large number of users.

By the looks of this thread, it appears that they are actively working on a solution.

I think for now, all we can do is wait on google to hopefully fix the problem on their end.

Update: the issue has now been resolved and outgoing gmail should work through Apple mail.


IMAP emails disappearing from Apple mail on one computer when moved on another!

I'm sorry but you're getting it wrong. This is the expected behavior of IMAP. IMAP is to keep all devices synced with the server. That means, if you delete an email on one computer, it eventually disappears from all the others. If you mark something as read on one computer, it eventually gets marked as read on all of the others. I hope this clears things up.


Using fn+F1 and fn+F2 keys change brightness instead of being used as standard function keys

Make sure the commands aren't duplicated in Shortcuts
System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Display


Does PhotoStream copy videos too or just still photos?

The iCloud Photo Stream FAQ says no - photos only.


El Capitan download for Mac Pro - App store "system is too new"

You'll struggle... the 3,1 won't boot from USB.
People say you can but I've had one since new & no amount of cajoling has ever made it do so.

If you have El Capitan in your purchase history on the Mini, then that's where you will be able to download it. The version linked in the App Store can only be run on machines that cannot run Sierra.

If you have a clean external USB drive, you could get the installer onto it the same way as you would have onto a USB stick. If you then drop the drive in the 3,1 it will boot from that.
Alternatively, once you have the right installer, you can run it to the external from the Mini & then swap it into the 3,1.


Credit to the answer actually should go to one my buddy (thanks again, Max!) who drew my attention to that fact that both iOS and WatchOS actually have diagnostic logs.
So I just run "Watch" app on iPhone and under General/Diagnostic Logs found a file named panic-base-2021-01-18-093103.ips. A self-speaking excerpt from its content follows:
  "panicString" : "Unexpected SoC (system) watchdog reset occurred"


MacBook 5,1 (unibody) getting kernel panics if memory bank 0 is populated

You've covered pretty much all the troubleshooting bases. If it's not a problem with the RAM itself, and it's not a problem with the firmware or software, it's almost certainly a hardware problem.

You could try running the Apple Hardware Test, but it's almost certainly a problem with the memory controller, which as far as I'm aware means a new logic board. Take it to an Apple Store or Authorized Service Provider.


Use Buffered Windows :
for each window, there will be another window that is off screen. The reason for this is that when the window the user is interacting with needs updating (ie, you move the mouse over the window) the WindowServer simply needs to copy the damaged region from the offscreen window and blast it over to the visible one. Similarly when the content of your window changes, applications are only supposed to update the region that changed. This drawing is performed on the buffer, which then is copied over to the 'visible' window.
Use Single-process Windows:

puts all open tabs inside a single safari proccess instead of several ones.


Make AppleScript turn a variable into the items between two specified items

Here's an alternative implementation that will be faster and is a lot more compact:

set L to {"1", "", "", "apple", "acda", "", "3454", "ImportantStuff", ¬
   "important1", "important2", "NotImportantStuff", "2", "", "efrg"}

set {i, j} to {1, -1}

tell L
    repeat until item i = "ImportantStuff"
        set i to i + 1
    end repeat
    repeat until item j = "NotImportantStuff"
        set j to j - 1
    end repeat
end tell

return items (i + 1) thru (j - 1) of L
-- OR: set myVar to items (i + 1) thru (j - 1) of L

It doesn't iterate through every item in the list, as that wastes time.  Instead, we hone in from the left to find the index where the important stuff begins; then hone in from the right to find the index where the important stuff ends.

Then you can simply retrieve the items between those two indices.

Method 2: Text Manipulation

Less generally, if you know your list contains only simple text items, then you can use text item delimiters to coerce the list into a string and manipulate the string:

set my text item delimiters to linefeed

set L to {"1", "", "", "apple", "acda", "", "3454", "ImportantStuff", "important1", ¬
   "important2", "important3", "NotImportantStuff", "2", "", "efrg"}

set textList to L as text

set my text item delimiters to {"ImportantStuff", "NotImportantStuff"}

set importantStuffText to text item 2 of textList

The first set of text item delimiters transform the list into a string where each item in the list occupies a single line in the string.  The second set of text item delimiters splits the string at the two places where the keywords are found.  This allows us to retrieve the bits in between, which, as it stands, will return:

"
important1
important2
important3
"

If there are multiple occurrences of the keywords, the important stuff will be all the even numbered text items.

To change the string back into a list again, you can do this:

set importantStuffList to paragraphs 2 thru -2 of importantStuffText
    --> {"important1", "important2", "important3"}


Any way to use ssh to recover a Mac from spinning beach ball of death

To reply to your question: no there isn't such a function accessible
at the window manager level.
It is a good suggestion to forward to Apple MacOS X feedback

Is your Mac still up?

Try:

ping IP_of_my_mac

Can you access it with ssh?

Can you provide us a copy of the output of a:

top -o cpu

and:

tail -20 /var/log/system.log

If the problem appears once more, could you try to kill the loginwindow
like this:
    connect on your mad Mac with ssh

/usr/bin/sudo /bin/kill `ps ax | grep '[/]loginwindow' | awk '{print $1}'`

This uggly command:

ps ax | grep '[/]loginwindow' | awk '{print $1}'

is a trick to give you the process ID of the loginwindow process with no
risk to kill the wrong guy.
I'm not sure this will be enough to force a total free and reset of the GPU.
Please tell me if this doesn't work so I could remove a useless and dangerous workaround.


Creating a Backup of a Mac hard drive that won't boot?

If the volume mounts, you may be able to use rsync to back up as many files as you can get. You'll have to make sure you have enough space for them on your iMac G4.

The command you'll run will look like this: (make a new folder on your desktop to put all this in)

rsync -avxr /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/* ~/Desktop/newfolder

This will attempt to move everything inside Macintosh HD to that new folder. It will skip over the things it can't transfer and keep going. With a bad volume like yours, this may be your best bet.

Good luck!


Afaik Verizon can only unlock the phone completely and not block certain carriers.

Until the iPhone 5, there was no model that supports CDMA and GSM.

The reason your phone doesn't work on an AT&T network (or most international networks for that matter) is because AT&T doesn't run a CDMA network.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3939


Keynote: table cell align right with padding

Increase the Text Inset option shown in your screenshot to add padding to the cell.

This adds padding to all sides (including the right), which may increase row height. It looks like you've already got some spare height to work with, so it shouldn't affect the height if you limit how much you increment it by.

Alternatively if the additional spacing on the top/bottom is an issue and you have numerical data in your cells, you can add fake spacing to the end of numerical data with a custom number format:

Select your cells/column and in the inspector choose Cell → Data Format → Create Custom Format….
Add spaces to the end of the format string. Add multiple spaces and customise their width if necessary.


Sharing mac clipboard with vim inside terminal

Try building Vim 7.3 with the clipboard feature enabled. Starting in Vim 7.3, +clipboard uses the OS X pasteboard directly (via the * or + register, as you expected).

It probably is possible to use +xterm_clipboard with an X server configured to convert X’s selection to and from the OS X pasteboard, but it would probably be more problematic than the direct +clipboard solution.

As an example, the MacPorts build of the vim port that I have currently installed (vim @7.3.661_0+huge+perl+python27+ruby+tcl) has +clipboard, -xterm_clipboard, and can access the pasteboard through * and +.

Also, if you happen to be running Vim inside tmux you will probably need my wrapper program to reenable pasteboard access inside tmux sessions; this only applies to +clipboard access: X-mediated access might still work OK—as long as you keep DISPLAY updated—but still seems unnecessarily cumbersome to me.


Safari can’t establish a secure connection to the server www.google.com

The issue was a temporary change and you should have an excellent chance of secure browsing from the main google entry page and all shipping versions of Safari.

https://www.google.com

Things could change next month, but lately google has served up rock solid https using certificate trust chains that Apple has included in all OS they ship.


This is a known bug with Apple's Smart Punctuation, as explained here. To avoid this issue in the future, go to Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> switch off Smart Punctuation. This will also remove the "press space twice to make a period" functionality, unfortunately.

From using the iOS 11.1 beta, it appears that this issue will be fixed in the 11.1 update.


How do I find out what entitlements an app has?

After some more searching, I found a command-line answer:

codesign -d --entitlements :- /Applications/Whatever.app/

This will print out an XML plist with values like:

<key>com.apple.security.app-sandbox</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.security.files.user-selected.read-write</key>
<true/>

For more information see https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/qa/qa1798/_index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40014167-CH1-IOS_STEPS

If anyone knows an easier/nicer way, though, I'd love to hear it.


How to separate and already established icloud account

I would like to provide a more complete answer.

First of all, you should create an Apple ID (iCloud account) for your daughter.

Once it's done, you can activate on your phone what Apple calls Family Sharing. This will make you the family owner. You can find it in your Settings app. Here is the documentation to set it up.

Once done, you just have to pair her account through her phone to yours.

This feature will allow you to share bought application or media and give you additional features such as location... But you will also be able to share the payment methods with control options ("need to ask for authorisation before buying anything"...).


Yosemite VPN breaks internet connection over Wi-fi

I have the exactly same issue on both Wi-fi and Ethernet connections. It started after upgrading from Maverick to Yosemite and all my VPN connection were behaving the same.

I got in touch with Apple support regarding this problem and their procedure was as follows:

Create a new network location (which gives us fresh network settings to work with)
Create the VPN connection in this new location
Test

If the problem persists (my situation) then your old settings are not the problem.

Create a new user (administrator rights)
Log in with this new user
Test again

If your problem persists (my situation) then your user settings are not the problem.

At this stage they said the problem should be the VPN providers, but in my situation nothing was changed from their end and I am using their services for more than a year now.

Continuing my research I suspected the problem should be DNS related. I can ping external addresses by IP, but not by DNS, and my local network still works.

As a temporary solution I entered my router's address in the VPN DNS Servers.


How does Fandango know my real credit card number through Apple Pay?

I found this on google:

It seams that they definitely should not have the last 4 digits of your card, but they do mention showing the last 4 digits of your device account number.


How to copy and paste as plain text on iOS?

In Mail on iOS 12, I use the "Share > Copy" trick:

Paste formatted
Select the just pasted text and in the context menu swipe right and tap on "Share..."
In the Share sheet, tap on "Copy". This copies as plain text!
Tap still selected text to get the context menu again
In the context menu tap on "Paste" to replace the selected, formatted text with its plain text representation

Still (too) many hoops to jump through but at least you don't need to switch between apps.
The "Share > Copy" trick might not be available in other apps, though.


Is it possible to test iMessage functionality without another person?

You can send a message to yourself. I've used this when having trouble with messages. You'll have received messages on the left and the sent ones on the right just as it is with other people.


Can an underpowered charger actually help my Macbook battery's longevity?

Since the Temperature is a major factor in Battery life degradation, slower charging is preferred.

However, if you are charging while consuming /(using your computer) the charger might not provide enough to actually charge the battery and it will get depleted.

In that case using the lower power charging is only recommended when computer is off.

Source 1:

Source 2:


Infinite Time Machine Backup on Apple Time Capsule

Solved by formatting the Time Capsule drive and reconfiguring Time Machine on the Mac.


How do I reassign numbering of Displays when you have more than 2 monitors connected to mac mini

This is a very annoying problem and I have not found any official documentation on how to control the numbering of the Desktop on each monitor. However, through a lot of trial and error, I've discovered these rules that will help you order the Desktop numbers.
First, a few key points on how the numbering behaves

Your 'Home Screen' (the display with the Dock) will always have the lowest number (e.g. Desktop 1, Desktop 2 if it has 2 desktops)
When you drag the Dock (in Displays >> Arrangement) from one display to another, it will swap the numbering between the two monitors that you dragged it to and from. For example if you have 3 monitors that is setup as follow

Monitor A (Desktop 1, Desktop 2) ==DOCK LOCATION==
Monitor B (Desktop 3, Desktop 4)
Monitor C (Desktop 5, Desktop 6)

If you drag the DOCK from Monitor A to B, you'll end up with the following:

Monitor A (Desktop 3, Desktop 4)
Monitor B (Desktop 1, Desktop 2) ==DOCK LOCATION==
Monitor C (Desktop 5, Desktop 6)

Therefore, by planning the sequence of DOCK position swaps, you can reach the final ordering that you desire.
The ordering may get messed up again if you disconnect the monitors or return from sleep or restart. I have no idea how to 'save' the settings. But at least this will help you reconfigure quickly.


How to create a Keynote theme with 16:9 AND 4:3 support?

There does seem to be a way to do this, but it involves mucking around inside the theme packages, so proceed at your own risk.

Create the theme you want in 1920x1080 and 1024x768 sizes. (Also at 1650x1050, if you'd like that as an option).
Save the themes with simple descriptors: theme_1920x1080, theme_1024x768, theme_1650x1050.
Navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/iWork/Keynote/Themes/.

Use Unarchiver to extract the package contents. You can now delete the initial theme files.

In each package, navigate to /Contents/Resources/en.lproj/ and open the name.strings file in the text editor of your choice.

Delete the resolution part of the name.
i.e.: "name" = "theme_1920x1080" => "name" = "theme".

After you have done so to the name.string files in each of the packages, return to the Themes folder and add ".kth" to each of the folders. Finder will ask you if you're sure. Click "Add."

These themes should all appear under one title in Keynote and you should be able to select both 4:3 and 16:9 resolutions.


“PowerPC applications are no longer supported” – Microsoft Office

PowerPC applications were allowed on Intel Mac with Rosetta. Rosetta disappeared with Lion, if I remember well (There were 2 OS between Mavericks and Snow Leopard).
The solution is either get a new version of Microsoft Office, or downgrade your Mac OS X.


Deduplication on ZFS is block-level, so it doesn't depend on the concept of files. The only way the deduplication can be defeated is if the offset of a file within the sparsebundle is not always the same modulo the block size. Since ZFS can use variable block sizes that are larger than the block size of the HFS+ file system inside the sparsebundle, correct alignment isn't guaranteed, but neither is it guaranteed that deduplication will fail.

If you're worrying about space, you may also want to enable compression on your ZFS pool. It imposes extra CPU overhead, but can actually increase effective disk throughput.


How do I add Wikipedia as a search provider for the Safari search bar?

There's a plugin for Safari called Glims that lets you add different search engines (including Wikipedia) to the search bar among other tweaks. You can read about and download it here.

Here's a post on someone's blog that details how to install it and set your search engines to what you want.

Hope that helps!


Issues creating Bootable USB for EL Capitan Public beta

I tried many things talked about here and on other top Google searches:

Redownloaded (three times)
Tried moving the .app to Desktop
Changed permissions of .app
Verified the .dmg with hdiutil
Used different Mac

Eventually got it to work by using a different USB flash drive. My original USB was a 16 GB Kingston, the second I tried that also didn't work was a 8 GB Lexar. The third and final one that did not get the "mount of outer dmg failed" error is a PNY 8 GB.

For reference I used the command:

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan\ Public\ Beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan\ Public\ Beta.app --nointeraction


Encrypted iPhone Backup Over iTunes on Windows 10

Some good news and some bad news.

Good news is the password is one you entered. It’s not reused or picked up from anywhere else. You (or your agent at the keyboard) could choose the same password as was used elsewhere, but they are not automatic or linked in any way.

To elaborate, iTunes does not encrypt backups by default, so someone typed in this password. That means you can think back to the first device you ever had that was an iPod shuffle, Classic iPod or iPhone and start making a list on paper or electronically.

List out the passwords you or someone with access to your computer may have ever used. Maybe start with easy things like the PIN you and your household use for gates, doors, devices, bank accounts. Me methodical and record which PIN you type. Also, go slow. If you want to try the pin 0000 and think you entered it but typed 00000 it may be a long time before you go back and try 0000.

Last good news is you are not really rate limited or at risk of destroying the backup by guessing wrong. You only lose time.

Bad news - the PIN or computer could be misbehaving - this is rare, but can happen. If the PIN was truly 1234 and that doesn’t work, your backup might be lost.

Neutral news - there is cracking software you may choose to pay for or trust. Like any internet software, even if the author didn’t plant malware, someone else could so consider care getting any software - but there are options to try and brute force passwords on backup files.

Apple isn’t offering to unlock it since they don’t set a default password and don’t want to get tricked into unlocking someone else’s private information let alone offer that sort of service. They do document how to move on if you exhaust your time or resources and can’t get into the backup you made.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205220


Never tried this, but is is cross-platform: http://www.aegisub.org/

After i read your comments - IMHO you will need:

Make .srt subtitles in any tools what you can manage to work (timing)
Optionally repair .srt files in any texteditor - skip this if not needed
Test the .srt subtitles with VLC or Quicktime/Perian
If everything is OK - embed subtitles into video with http://code.google.com/p/subler/


Mac Mail Limits (messages and mailbox size)

The Limit is not something programmed into Mail.

In effect, your Hard-Drive storage and the Performance of your Mac are the only limiting factors, not some count of messages in terms of size or number.
As you already noticed, the app gets really slow with Mails over 100k or even 200k on current hardware (perhaps except the Mac Pro).

It is not recommended having such a big MailBox at all.

How I think it should/could be handled :

Don't go beyond 10k Mails (in your main Postbox)
Move Old Mails into a Mail-Archive

Having your own Server for that helps a lot.
I use a OS X (Mail-) Server  with a Roundcube Frontend and a MySQL Database.
In our company we have a Linux Mail-Server and a Roundcube Frontend with a MySQL DB.
The Server can handle those Mails a lot better than Apple Mail. Also roundcube as a Frontend is much faster when going through severel houndred of thousands of mails.

If you're reaching a Mail-Count of more than 200k, you are probably collecting a decade of mails (unless you are writing a lot).
After 3-5 Years you should store those mails on a Backup Server (Maybe at a different location), safe for nobody to access and safe regarding any kind of loss.


iPhone 6 restored from encrypted iPhone 5S backup doesn't retain passwords

I just have had the same issue when I try to restore 5S backup into 6. After a few attempts, it eventually worked fine. Here's what I did for the successful try:

Take old iPhone backup with encryption on
Reset all content / all settings on new iPhone without connection to PC / Mac
Go through startup config on new iPhone until you see "Set Up iPhone" screen, which let you select the options to restore from iCloud / iTunes backup
Select "Restore from iTunes backup"
Connect to PC/Mac and select backup you want to restore
Done!

It wasn't successful when I tried to restore without reset, or without going through startup config. Hope this helps


Macbook disk space show as used photos library space that is stored in an external SD

This is a bug and I can reproduce that on macOS 10.12 and macOS 10.13 and I have filed both feedback and a radar (developer bug with Apple) to remedy it.

My thought is that the process that reads the space occupied by photos libraries isn't smart enough to detect that the iCloud or system library isn't on the boot volume.

Until Apple fixes their code you could not store the photos off the disk or understand that the summary calculations are wrong. One might assume that if enough people report the same bug, it might get more weight when the list of   bugs to fix gets reviewed - but I can't speak for how Apple in specific decides which engineers work on what tasks.

For me the 109 GB of green "photos" exists on the volume Data and not on fast - despite what the visual shows.


Is there a limit to the quantity of text one can write in Stickies?

There shouldn't be. The only issue you may incur is writing too much for your RAM to handle, but that's into if you write gigabytes unto gigibytes of raw text.
The average user shouldn't.


No - iCloud doesn't let you choose things to sync so the developer of each app you run needs to decide how and when to incorporate support for iCloud.

It's not such a silly question since I can't seem to find any Apple web page that explains this plainly.

As you find things that don't work with iCloud, you can pester the developer (kill them with praise and high marks even if you feel you want to give them a bad rating since you can expect them to please their fans first if they have any doubts about which tasks to add to their apps).


How do Mac file imports from SD cards work when the option is set to delete after import?

There are many programs that will import photos from a memory card, so you might want to get more information so that people don't have to guess.

Image Capture imports images and then once they are verified - deletes only the files. This deletion is easily reversed with run of the mill "camera card software" that recovers deleted files. See https://www.prosofteng.com/picture-rescue-2/ for one example of that.

The other Apple software generally works the same (iMovie, iPhoto) - but if these photos are really irreplaceable - you could get a professional quote to recover the files and interview your uncle to understand what he did or look over the Mac to see what software is installed and rule out something that would reformat the drive.


How do I rename files by moving the first 4 numbers

I made an example scenario in Better Finder Rename 10 (10.20)

My filenames:

0001 - Example.svg
0002 - Example.svg
0003 - Example.svg
0004 - Example.svg
0005 - Example.svg
0006 - Example.svg
0007 - Example.svg
0008 - Example.svg
0009 - Example.svg
0010 - Example.svg
0011 - Example.svg
0012 - Example.svg

I used the Multi-step drawer to do this, since I wanted to also clean up the new filename so that there is a space between the numbers once they are at the end and I also wanted to remove the - in the front, since it wouldn't be needed anymore.

First I add a space to the end in preparation of the numbers:

  This is its own step

Category: Text
Action: Add text to end
Add:  <- a single space
Change: The filename without the extension

Then I move the numbers to the end:

  This is its own step

Category: Character Positions & Ranges
Action: Move a range of characters to position
From text position: 0, From the front
A number of characters: Next, 4
To text position: 0, From the end
Change: Only the file name

...and all that is left is to remove the spacer I had between the numbers and the text -:

  This is its own step

Category: Text
Action: Remove text from beginning
Remove: - <- space dash space
Change: The file name without the extension


Can Apple TV estimate what time I will finish viewing the current show?

Yes.

When you tap the touch surface of the remote in the 4th & 5th generation Apple TV, the progress bar appears as you described, with total length of that program along with an indication of how far along you are.

Tap that touch surface a second time. The labels on the progress bar to show the current time-of-day and the estimated time of completion. Just what you asked for.


You could make a new account, with Parental Controls setting.  Use the Parental Controls to only allow specific applications to run.  System-level programs (like anti-virus, or others) would still be running in the background; but, as far as normal applications go, you would know exactly what was being run and when.


Help with an AppleScript - click a menu item which has a name which changes

Object Specifiers
In AppleScript, the way an object is referred to is called the object specifier. In your code, you are using the name specifier.
Try a numeric value for the menu item, such as:
click (menu item 12) of menu "Window" of menu bar 1

Or a relative term, such as:
click the last menu item of menu "Window" of menu bar 1


Cannot set Finder window background colour / image

Okay, so I just found a work around instead of a solution..

Made a new folder, changed background image and dragged everything over..

Thanks for the suggestion, I'm sure it would have worked but it seemed like a lot to try just to change the background on a folder.. A pretty pointless thing anyway really!


Does disabling the prompt to enable two-factor authentication on an iOS device disable future prompts from appearing?

You cannot guarantee that the user will not be prompted in the future.
There's a continued development in security and the need for preventive measures. Today two-factor authentication is absolutely crucial and wide-spread, 25 years ago it was only used by the few.
Apple some times "moves the bar" by changing the minimum security requirements. In those cases, they could start prompting user's again for enabling two-factor authentication - or even requiring it entirely.
For example, not so long ago the requirements for developer accounts were changed so that these users must have two-factor authentication enabled (also affects apps such as TestFlight, App Store Connect, etc.). These users were notified in advance that this requirement would be instated.


How to remove symlinks created after a specific date?

Inspired by How to delete files from a specific date?:

# Create a marker
touch -t 201910190000.00 /tmp/PID$$.marker1

# View the files you would like to delete
find /usr/local/include/ -type l -newer /tmp/PID56680.marker1 -ls | less

# Delete them
find /usr/local/include/ -type l -newer /tmp/PID56680.marker1 | xargs rm -f


Mac mini turns off automatically by itself

It sounds like you might have an issue with the OS or an application that's crashing the OS.

A shutdown cause of 5 is a normal shutdown and nothing to worry about.  It's saying that it "shutdown correctly."
Shutdown of -62 is generally due to an unresponsive application.

You should start with booting into Safe Mode to see if it's something being loaded.

Other options would be to wipe the drive with a clean OS (also a good time to upgrade the drive if you're still using an old spinning one).

Personally, I would start with booting from an external drive, a clean copy of macOS to see if the problem goes away before embarking on swapping out hardware.


Spray compressed air back and forth into the exhaust vent in the back of the machine, where the display hinge is located. Do this while the machine is running so that the dislodged dirt will be immediately expelled by the airflow from the fans. Beyond this, nothing should be required.


GarageBand not starting after Snow Leopard upgrade

You need a GarageBand version 6.05 from here.

And you need to update your Snow Leopard to 10.6.8


Does Safari has a panel similar with Chrome's Preview under Network?

Click on the underlined URL shown on the right of the error. This opens the Resources tab with all the request and response details in the right sidebar.


Mac OS Sierra Feedback app came out of nowhere

Yes, this is a malicious app.  Try downloading Malwarebytes from online to remove it.  Or search for "feedback" in finder to try and locate the app.


Where are the reference manuals for Excel 2008?

Here's the What's New page for Excel: https://support.office.com/en-us/excel.  You'll find Mac toward the bottom.  Once you're at the SOC site you can search for specific questions, like "format dates".


Reset the PMU on macbook when the left shift key is dead

If you feel confident enough the only other way I know is to take the MacBook apart, remove the battery, hold down the power button for 5+ seconds and then put it all back together again. Sounds simple but it could get messy if you haven't taken one apart before.

If you do take it apart you could use this time to try and fix the the keyboard and give the poor thing a clean inside...


Where macOS keeps VPN Network configuration?

When using the Default profile with Configuration: for the VPN and modifying its settings, the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.networkextension.plist file, the one starting in the root of the e.g. Macintosh HD, not your Home folder, will contain the VPN settings.

Also note that if you select Add Configuration... with Configuration: for the VPN, then some information is also stored in the ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.networkConnect.<UUID>.plist file for the VPN as well.

By the way, you can use the defaults command e.g. defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.networkextension.plist, to read this and other .plist files, you do not necessarily need to use plutil to convert to XML in order to read them.


where to download the bootcamp software for windows when updating/installing OSX Lion?

Both the MacBook Air / Mac Mini (which can lack a CD/DVD drive as shipped) and Macs running Lion now simply download their BootCamp drivers from within the Boot Camp Assistant.


How to close the Terminal app using the terminal command-line("exit") in macOS Catalina

In Terminal > Preferences… > Profiles > Shell, the default setting for When the shell exits: is: Don't close the window
This can be changed to: Close the window
Then the exit command will close the window.

Edit to address the edited Question:
If you want to close the window using the exit command you can do as suggested in the first part of this answer, however, if you also want to automatically and gracefully close Terminal as well, as part of your script or in place of the exit command as shown in your question, then you can do the following:
First create a simple AppleScript application using the following example AppleScript code in Script Editor:
tell application "Terminal" to if (busy of windows) does not contain true then quit

Saving it as an application named e.g. QuitTerminal in the main Applications folder.
After saving it, open Terminal and then open e.g. QuitTerminal in order to trigger allowing permissions under System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy
Once this is done you can then use the following at the end of your script or in place of the exit command:
open -a "OuitTerminal"

Example based on command shown in your question:
/Users/harikrishna/Desktop/youtube.sh ; open -a "OuitTerminal"

This will only close Terminal if there are no running processes in any of the windows in Terminal.
Note: If you do not want to see e.g. OuitTerminal show in the Dock, you can modify the application using the following command in Terminal:
defaults write '/Applications/OuitTerminal.app/Contents/Info.plist' LSUIElement -bool yes

If you do not care about any running process you can force close Terminal from the script or command using killall Terminal in place of exit; however this is messy and I do not recommend using it over what's presented  above.


One thing for sure: it shouldn't act like that.

Beside that it'll be hard to say what was going on -  seems like it was overheating (was the fan running?) and didn't want to start working before cooling at least a bit.

There might be a lot of reasons for that, but keep a close eye on your machine behaviour - should it happened again - definitely get it serviced since it's a brand new machine.