MacBook shows flashing question mark in a folder when battery is at > 70%

Based on the symptoms and the fact that you have no problem booting from an external devices means it could be, in order of most to least likely, the following:

Defective battery
Logic Board
SSD Drive

The battery and SSD are "simple" to diagnose, but not very convenient (unless you've actually got a shop and spare batteries and Mac proprietary SSDs laying about)*.  Basically, you would try "known good" components to see if the problem goes away.  The logic board is the most difficult as you would need to either eliminate everything else as a possibility or use specialized tools to verify that the SMC and related components (i.e. power rails) were functioning properly.

  If the battery level is high, the internal ssd is not shown on boot (holding Opt),

What we know is that everything works so long as the battery level is not high because it tells us that the computer will boot and do everything it's supposed to but it won't see the actual drive itself; it's not just a missing file system.

A battery can swell and push everything out of alignment just enough to break contact with components.

The SSD could be failing since it's the only component that actually "disappears" from the system, but it works fine otherwise. Since the SSDs aren't SATA anymore and are now directly connected to the PCIe bus, you should be experiencing other difficulties and not just the SSD in isolation.

The reason I put the logic board higher in probability than the SSD is because the circuitry (managed by the SMC) is what regulates voltage.  Regardless of the charge or from where it's coming from (mains or battery) the SMC "system" ensures that the correct voltage gets to where it's going.  In other words, the voltage to the PCIe bus and ultimately to the SSD doesn't fluctuate.  If it does, then the problem is with the logic board, not the battery.

Either way, if and once you elminate the battery as a cause, you'll need to take your machine in for service.  Apple will have you replace the logic board, however a specialist (i.e. Rossman Repair; not affiliated, just a satisfied customer) might be able to find and replace the actual bad component at a far lower price.

* The 2015 and earlier MacBook Pro laptops had a removable SSD whereas the 2016 and later models have a soldered on SSD.  They can still be replaced, however it will have to be done by someone with the proper tools and skill-set for SMT PCB rework.  I left this info in for people with the same issue but earlier MacBook models.


Since you still have your old iPhone to hand, you're in the best position to prevent any messaging issues, you should eliminate any funkyness with iMessage intercepting.

You need to head into Settings > Messages, then look for the iMessage toggle at the top of the resulting menu. Turn it off, and then try and send some messages to contacts you know have an iPhone to make sure it's worked properly. If you're presented with a sea of green, then all's good.

If you've already made the switch and are still suffering

Grab your phone and ring Apple support – check your local Apple website for the number in your part of the world. Get put through to Technical Support, have your Apple ID handy, and ask them to manually remove your phone number from the iMessage servers.


How can I create a new Recovery Partition on EXTERNAL disk?

Manually Cloning a Recovery Partition

This process worked for me on an external USB drive, but I don't have a Firewire drive or encrypted partition to test with, but it should work for you.

Requirements

Existing recovery partition on your internal drive (or elsewhere).
At least 650 MB of free space on your external drive (a previous version of this answer required more space, but I fixed the first section to only use what's required).

Add New Partition

Notes: this process is not destructive, provided you have sufficient free space on your drive.

In Terminal, run diskutil list. You should get output like this:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh SSD           119.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *320.1 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Portable                319.7 GB   disk1s2

Make note of the identifiers for your existing recovery partition (in my case, disk0s3) and the main partition on your external drive (disk1s2).
Run diskutil info disk1s2 | grep 'Total Size', replacing disk1s2 with the identifier for your external volume. Note the number of bytes listed.
Run diskutil resizeVolume disk1s2 Xb JHFS+ Temp 650002432b, replacing X with the total number of bytes from step 2 minus 650002432. This will repartition your disk, giving us a new partition with exactly enough space for the recovery partition.  Note: A recovery partition is not always 650002432 bytes.  Find out the exact size by checking diskutil info on the partition you want to copy.
The resizeVolume command will print out the new partition map (like in step 1), make note of the identifier for the new partition (labelled Temp).

Clone Existing Recovery to the New Partition

Run the following command in Terminal to clone the recovery partition to the new partition, replacing disk0s3 and disk1s3 with the appropriate identifiers for your partitions:

sudo asr -source /dev/disk0s3 -target /dev/disk1s3 --erase

You will be asked for your password, and to verify that you want to erase the contents (type y followed by enter), then the cloning process will begin.
Unmount the recovery partition if it's mounted, then run sudo asr adjust --target /dev/disk1s3 --settype "Apple_Boot". Be sure to replace disk1s3 with the appropriate identifier. This sets the proper partition type, which stops OS X from auto-mounting the recovery partition when you attach your external drive.

If everything completed properly, you should have a working recovery partition on your external disk.


Cannot Install MacOS Catalina in Recovery Mode

Tony looks to have the scoop here on an installer selection error for about 24 hours yesterday. Try again exactly what you did previously after 0000 UTC Thursday 6 August.

When you power it off, I would attempt a second time to do an erase install.

Hold Option-Command-R at start.
Use Disk Utility when you are to the “install” screen - delete all the volumes - especially if you have more than one that says “Data”
Then Erase the entire drive - leave Untitled as the title.
Then install macOS

If that doesn’t work, you may have a hardware issue and need to contact support.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496
https://eclecticlight.co/2020/08/03/how-should-you-clean-re-install-catalina/

Or perhaps try the App Store - step 2 in this other answer.


Why is it important to keep lots of freespace on OSX? What is the impact?

OS X has several built in tools that suspend themselves when space is low. iOS has a far more evolved system where space is much more precious, and over time, those mechanisms are finding their way into OS X as well:

General HFS+ optimization on spinning HD such as delayed allocation, pre-allocation and on the fly defragmentation of files
local Time Machine snapshots (10.7 and later)
Photos database (10.10 and later) can "reoptimize" and reduce storage when you run low.
Cached files in ~/Library/Caches and /Library/Caches will probably get harvested under the correct storage pressure (no space for swap for instance). Look for iTunes music cached files, iCloud synced files

In the case of very large swings in storage, look first at Time Machine trying to thin the local backups when storage runs low past the "warning" level. Once those messages are logged to /var/log/system.log the time machine daemons will be more aggressive about pruning old backups, but not suspending local backups entirely.

Hot file optimization is where small files that are read from or written to often get tiered to the fastest portion of a spinning hard drive.

Keeping a little free space (I believe mtmd thinning begins at 20% of the volume) means you can have a longer range of local Time Machine snapshots to protect you from deleting a file or erasing some work without needing to connect an actual Time Machine drive to recover that file.

With more free space on the drive, the other optimizations can make your drive work faster, so it's more a performance issue when you get less than 10 or 5 GB of free space since the system has less flexibility in optimizing for speed and has to just write a file where there is room as opposed to where it would best be kept to minimize file fragmentation.

You can also run the periodic cleanup scripts to see if rotating log files and pruning files in the various /tmp directories help in emergency cases. I've even gone so far as cleaning cached files after quitting the apps to get temporary reprieve to let a critical task finish or get a good backup of files before restarting the system to recover from the manual deletion.

My experience is you don't really see significant slow downs until you get to less than 15 GB of space - and sometimes not even until you get into the 5 GB of free space. In fact, these caching designs speed up the OS and help
with recovering files (in the case of Time Machine local backups). Running benchmarks can tell that drives start to slow down once you get them 30% full - so SSD are far more level in performance due to the lack of rotational time delays and head seek delays. They also have some overhead to allow a full drive to still have room to juggle delete and write operations since they address storage in larger chunks than the typical block size of an I/O.


There isn’t a hard drive in iPhones, and Apple has engineered things so that it’s very expensive to get to the leads and snoop or alter the electrical signals to defeat encryption, so there’s no trivial path to decrypt or bring another os to your storage.

However, you should assume that unless you’re very good the police and government can get your data by coercion or brute force - especially if their budget is $25,000 or more (and maybe far less to compromise some devices). Your 4 digit pass phrase is the weakest link so that weakens your protection substantially if iOS is not set to self erase after 10 failed attempts.

Also, just because an exploit or jailbreak isn’t out now, doesn’t mean they can’t image or keep your device and crack it later. The iPhone X is way on the “more secure” side so unless you chose a weak pass phrase, you’re probably safe for some time to come if they didn’t get your data from a subpoena / home computer which are far easier to seize and crack and then get to your records by account takeover.

There are jailbreaks for your device on both iOS 12 and iOS 13 so I wouldn’t assume you’re safe if they have physical control of the device and time to work it and get USB active:

https://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/wiki/escapeplan/guides/jailbreakcharts
https://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/czkyje/meta_latest_jailbreak_release/


What iOS apps read health records from Apple Health?

Here's an app that appears to match: ClinicQ by Health Here.
The fourth screenshot on the AppStore claims:

CliniQ can import your allergies, medical conditions, procedures and medications from Apple Health

In the process, I found how to add an institution as a data source (Apple Health can pull records from a compatible portal) although this is not yet enabled in Australia, probably because currently only US, UK and Canada have participating sources.
I also learned the difference between Health Records and the older Clinical Documents.
Finding apps that DO NOT access Health Records was quite easy.  For Aussies, the Healthi app can connect to MyHealthRecord records, but doesn't integrate with Apple's Health app.
Around launch time (2018), A tale of two hospitals mentions Johns Hopkins and Penn Medicine as early adopters.  The same article mentions 'EMR vendors such as EPIC, Cerner, Athenahealth, Meditech and AllScripts'... these are potential sources for more examples of apps that DO use the Health Records.


macOS Big Sur - How do I disable keyboard backlight permanently?

You need to uncheck the "Adjust keyboard brightness in low light" setting in the "Keyboard" pane of System Preferences. Then, adjust the backlight to zero by pressing F5 (or tapping the setting on the Touch Bar).

(image from https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202310)


I searched for the icon you've uploaded…
If you see output devices in 'System preferences > Sound > Output', try selecting again the build-in internal speakers.

If 'System preferences > Sound > Output' shows no output devices, try a reset of the nvram.

Reference:

'volume stuck on mute, cant untick the mute box in sound settings (macbook air)' https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8593873
'Reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac' https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063
'iMacの音量表示が斜線になりiMacから音が出なくなった時に試したこと' https://www.chawanmushi.net/entry/2018_0602-imac-sound-setting/


Chrome: Keyboard shortcut to leave address bar and focus browsing area?

[EDIT:]
Does simply pressing Tab a few times work for you?
[/EDIT]

There doesn't seem to be such a shortcut. What you can do is press CTRL+F, search for a word close to where you are on the page and then Esc.

Of course this is not really convenient, so you could also do what this other answer suggests and type javascript: in the url bar, followed by Enter. This executes the javascript following the colon, so it does nothing. However, it DOES refocus the page.

This is still not convenient, but using AutoHotkey, you can remap any shortcut you'd like to do this. The AutoHotkey Script would probably have to simulate CTRL+L to make sure focus lies on the url bar, followed by javascript: and Enter.

I hope this helps. Sadly, AutoHotkey is only available for windows but there might be a similar tool for Mac.

Another option I just found out about: On windows, I can press Alt followed by Tab. This might work on mac as well.


Repeated verification code popup when I use the app "Music" with WiFi on

I can't say with absolute certainly but the best guess would be that, so long as these requests/confirmations always appear within a few seconds/minutes of you activating the function, that it's simply not accurately logging your location.

I live in London & most times these requests appear to come from an area within 5 miles of where I live.
However, when I visit my relatives in Tenerife, all requests of this type appear to originate in Madrid, some 2000km away.
I've simply got used to the idea that this always happens.


Secret way to trigger Thesaurus on Mac OS X?

It is possible that you pressed the esc key. Yosemite has a similar feature to iOS 8's QuickType keyboard that "intelligently predicts" what you are trying to type. It looks like this:

Is this what appeared?


Hold your iPhone in landscape orientation. Calendar will show five days, which is kind of close to a week.


The behaviour you are seeing is the way it is supposed to work.  As @benwiggy said in a comment your location is as displayed in the toolbar and that is where a new folder will be created.
I can accept that you do not like this - you are probably not the only one. I can see two alternatives:

Use 'column' view.  With this view your focus/location changes as
you go down the folder hierarchy.

Look for a third party Finder replacement which has the behaviour you
would like.  For example:
Path Finder which behaves in the way you would like.
ForkLift which behaves like Finder.


Why is a black iPhone 4S is shown as white in iTunes?

iTunes deduces the color of the iPhone from the serial number he finds on the logic board.  For example:

MD269LL   = Black AT&T 64GB 4S
MD271LL   = White AT&T 64GB 4S
MD277LL/A = White Verizon 16GB 4S
...

So, check your model number and look it up to make sure you've got a black one.


How to change dock icon when some app has created generic icon images?

You might want to make sure your app is correctly associated (for that you can use the free RCDefaultApp panel).

If you fancy changing icons, you can try the arguably pricey Candybar from Panic inc. which is excellent if you love playing with your icons, but that's all it does, so for 6 Starbuck's Coffee Latte you can do that :p

Please note that if you change an icon, you will probably have to restart the finder (and/or the Dock) for the change to be reflected (Logoff also works).


iPhone Music app: music with an iCloud status of Uploaded can't be played?

The problem should be in iTunes on your PC.

Since Apple Music couldn't find any matching, iTunes Match should automatically upload your song, only if they are matching the specifications. They are found in the section "About file formats"


Same problem here. I used Onyx Maintenance, then Rebuild tab and that fixed the icons. As a side-effect, it cleared custom icon positions, and other Finder display parameters etc.


iMac won't recognise .MTS videos on my hard drive, how can I play them?

Try VideoLan. It is free and should handle most kinds of video formats.

The method for recognising AVCHD format is with regard to Apple Video applications, and not QuickTime. Those applications have the reader for that format. But you're only interested in viewing them so I suggested VideoLan.

Also there is a QuickTime plugin which recognises many formats, but I have never tried it with AVCHD or MTS formats. It is called Perian. Please note that it is no longer supported in the form of updates but it is still offered on the official site.


Automator to get PDF Annotations and export to Excel

Assuming you know the basics of Automator....Create a workflow with these Actions:

In the AppleScript Action copy & paste the following:

    on run {input, parameters}
    set delimitedList to paragraphs of (input as string)
    set myExport to ""
    do shell script "touch /tmp/myFile.csv"
    repeat with myLines in delimitedList
        set myLineExport to ""
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"    "}
        set listItems to every text item of myLines
        repeat with eachItem in listItems
            set myLineExport to myLineExport & "\"" & eachItem & "\","
        end repeat
        set myExport to myExport & myLineExport & "
"
    end repeat
    write_to_file(myExport, (POSIX file "/tmp/myFile.csv" as alias), false)
    return POSIX file "/tmp/myFile.csv" as alias
end run

on write_to_file(this_data, target_file, append_data)
    try
        set the target_file to the target_file as string
        set the open_target_file to open for access file target_file with write permission
        if append_data is false then set eof of the open_target_file to 0
        write this_data to the open_target_file starting at eof
        close access the open_target_file
        return true
    on error
        try
            close access file target_file
        end try
        return false
    end try
end write_to_file

Note: You may run into issues if your annotations contain quotes, however there will be no problem if you use smart quotes.

You can select your pdf in the first prompt.

Sources: https://www.macosxautomation.com/applescript/sbrt/sbrt-09.html


What screen capture apps for OS X exist as alternatives to Fraps?

My suggestions:

iShowU HD – great app, can record in-game videos, records both microphone and system app, compress video and still fast; $29.95.
QuickTime – records audio only from system input, supports in-game screen capture, slower then iShowU HD, but still smooth, free and built-in.
Krut – Ugly interface, very buggy.
Screeny – No demo available; $14.99


Can you wipe a MacBook pro's ssd if it doesn't have a firmware password?

Sorry, you're out of luck. If they boot into recovery mode, they can wipe the drive without going online. Even if they went online, your iCloud information is stored on the encrypted, unmounted drive so the recovery OS isn't going to log in to your account and report the location anyway. Report the theft to Apple in case the thief, or a buyer, goes to an apple store for help with your machine.


How to completely replace Helvetica with San Francisco

You can't change fonts without jailbreaking. If your device is jailbroken, you can copy your preferred SFUI font family from /System/Library/Fonts/CoreUI/ over the top of each Helvetica font in /System/Library/Fonts/Core/.


Why my MacBook Air terminal uses sh-3.2# instead of my username#?

I don't know why it changed, but you can override sh-3.2# or other default shell prompts by changing the $PS1 variable. To do that, simply run the following command (including the space after the dollar sign):

export PS1='\h:\w \u\$ '

This will replace your shell prompt with Zoos-MacBook-Air:~ root$. However, this change is not persistent and will be gone when you exit or close the Terminal. You can make it persistent by editing root's .bash_profile file. Run the following command while you are in a root shell to modify that file:

echo 'export PS1='"'"'\h:\w \u\$ '"'" >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'export PS1='"'"'\h:\w \u\$ '"'" >> ~/.profile

or

echo "export PS1='\\h:\\w \\u\\\$ '" >> ~/.bash_profile
echo "export PS1='\\h:\\w \\u\\\$ '" >> ~/.profile

This will make the change persistent.

Tests were made on iOS 11 with root shell, but everything in this answer works on macOS as well.


Terminal flashes on empty backspace with Yosemite

That is called the visual bell, and by default it’s enabled when your sound is muted. To change that setting, go into Terminal > Preferences > Profiles > <your profile> > Advanced.

You can also run

echo $'\nset bell-style off' >> ~/.inputrc

to disable Readline's use of the bell (deleting on an empty line, tab-complete, etc.). You will need to restart your session for this change to take effect.


Someone at Apple communities helped me resolve the issue. Posting an answer if someone faces the same issue.

 set theCurrentDate to current date
set dateTime to short date string of theCurrentDate & space & time string of theCurrentDate
set P to offset of "/" in dateTime
set dateTime to text 1 through (P - 1) of dateTime & "-" & text (P + 1) through -1 of dateTime
set P to offset of "/" in dateTime
set dateTime to text 1 through (P - 1) of dateTime & "-" & text (P + 1) through -1 of dateTime
set theFilePath to "/Users/rohitbhutani/Desktop/movie " & dateTime & ".mov"

tell application "QuickTime Player"
     set newMovieRecording to new movie recording
     tell newMovieRecording
           start
           delay 5
           pause
           save newMovieRecording in POSIX file theFilePath
           stop
           close newMovieRecording
     end tell
end tell


SuperDrive - one in five dvds won't mount

It would be good to know if the one in five is the same disk each time, or if it's more a case of roughly every 5 attempts the mount fails.  If it's the same discs everytime, then you could further troubleshoot by trying them in other devices.  If it's random discs, then it's likely your drive that needs troubleshooting.

Does it make any weird grinding noises, or excessive head seek operations before giving up on mounting?  And does it sometimes fail to eject the drive if it has failed to mount?  I ask because this is exactly what my iMac superdrive (2009 era) did.  Sometimes it would read, sometimes if would make awful noises, sometimes it wouldn't eject because it said there was no disc when there was.

I eventually removed it and replaced it with an SSD instead, and for the price of a few dollars on eBay I bought an external USB case for it to see if I could get it working at all - it's worked fine ever since!  Maybe just being rough with it and being able to shake it about and stuff when I removed it (in a way I couldn't so when it was internal to the iMac) helped?

If it is the drive, you have limited repair options other than percussive maintenance, a monster clean with a vacumm nozzle right down the slots, and re-seating the cables etc.  You could try putting your Mac Mini on it's side when inserting discs - sounds daft, but I've know this to work with failing drives.

As for replacing it, then any DVD drive is going to be absolutely fine if you just want to read discs.  Frankly you will struggle get a DVD-ROM, and anything you buy will be a writer also, but there is no need to go for the fancy options like dual layer burning, lightscribe lazer etching, Blu Ray playback etc etc.


Depending on your printer, you can sometimes print photos from the printer end. If your printer is able to see photos on your iPad using the camera connection kit, then you could take a screenshot of the webpage, then find the image using the photo browser function of your printer, and print the image.

If your printer is airprint enabled, then it might be possible to do as you suggest and connect the printer to the iPad hotspot, but I don't have an iPad that can create WiFi hotspots, so I can't test it.


Using the terminal, you can try deleting your dock preferences, then restarting the dock:

% defaults delete com.apple.dock
% killall Dock

This won't affect the contents of your dock, but it will reset the preferences that you'd normally edit in the Dock panel of the System Preferences.

EDIT: Per comments below, apparently this does reset dock contents for some people, but not for others—not clear why.


Is there a way to capture popovers in macOS?

Found the solution by accident: after the camera icon appears, press and hold ⌘ key, then click the popover or sheet.


How can I reformat the internal drive and install Mountain Lion from an external drive?

You don't need any external drive. You can erase the drive and reinstall OS X using the recovery system:

Start up from the recovery partition by holding command-R.
Open Disk Utility, select the drive (not the Macintosh HD volume), open the erase tab, set the format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and press the erase button. It also erases the hidden recovery and EFI partitions.
Reinstall OS X. When I did this with my MacBook Air, I restarted it after I had erased the drive, so I don't know if it is possible to reinstall OS X from the recovery partition without relying on Internet Recovery mode. But if you restart the Mac, it will start up in Internet Recovery mode, which means that it downloads a disk image of the recovery system from Apple's servers, and you can then install OS X on the empty drive.

Some older Macs support a recovery partition but not Internet Recovery mode. See http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4904. If you have one of those Macs, you erase the whole drive from the recovery partition, and it is not in fact possible to reinstall OS X without starting up in Internet Recovery mode after that, you can probably use Recovery Disk Assistant instead.

If others search for how to do a normal erase and reinstall, erase the main OS X partition (like Macintosh HD) instead of the whole drive:

Start up from the recovery partition by holding command-R.
Open Disk Utility, select the Macintosh HD volume, open the erase tab, and press the erase button.
Quit Disk Utility and choose Install OS X.

See https://support.apple.com/kb/ph11273.

If your Mac came with Lion, the Install OS X option will download and install the latest minor version of Lion. You can upgrade to Mountain Lion or Mavericks from App Store after that.


Do I have to create a contact entry for *myself* to use Siri?

Yes you do. Siri uses the contact information from the contact you select in Settings → General → Siri → My Info.

If you do not have a contact selected there, Siri will not know your address, etc.


I have a similar problem. Non-iBook store epubs don't sync with iOS devices, no matter what options are switched on/off.

Looking at the directory they're now stored on in Mavericks (~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books), they seem to have been converted to a different format (from .epub to a folder with xml/html files), and i suspect that's why they don't sync.

Any suggestions on how to sync these would be most appreciated!

EDIT: To answer my own question, check that iTunes is actually syncing all books. It had changed my previous preference to selected books, and preferentially un-ticked all non-iBook store epubs. Changing that fixed the syncing problem for me...


Aahhh, bash redirection :-

( pmset -g && echo && pmset -g assertions ) | open -f -a TextEdit

That runs your commands as a single bash command (that's the effect of &&) in a sub-shell (which is what wrapping it in the () does) and redirects the output of the sub-shell into TextEdit for you. You technically don't have to use && instead of ; but the effect of changing it is that if any of the commands fail it will stop the entire chain at that point.

Note: In your example all the commands are being run (as you can prove by just running pmset -g; echo; pmset -g assertions at the command line), it's just that you are applying the pipe to only the last one. That's why it needs to be run in a subshell.

Note: that you could replace the | character with > and send the output to a file if you wish.


Is it possible to save http-hosted MP3 files directly onto an iPad?

As fas as I know there is no way to save an MP3 file directly from the web. What you can do is jailbreak your iPad and then try saving it.


It depends upon the program. If it uses gettext which is a common library for doing internationalization then setting the LANG environment variable to en_US (or en_UK if you want British Enligh vs. American English) should do the trick.

If you only want specific applications to use english messages then you can alias the command to something like LANG=en_US command-you-want-in-english.

Aliasing is dependant upon which shell you are using but in bash (the default shell on MacOSX) you would put the following command in your .bashrc or .bash_profile:

alias command='LANG=en_US command'

When in doubt - look to the man page or manual for the command you are running to see if they give details on how their internationalization is implemented and how you as a user can control it.


Is there a way to rename the built in speaker name? (Mac Mini M1)

You can't rename the existing audio output, but you can create another one with your chosen name.
Use Audio MIDI Setup.app (in the Utilities folder) to create an Aggregate Device that only contains your mini's speakers. (Normally, this is used to create a single input/output for multiple devices.)
Click on the + button at the bottom of the window to create a new Aggregate device, and then double-click on the item in the sidebar to rename it.
You will need to tick the "Use" checkbox next to "Mac mini Speakers".

You can then choose a more descriptive name, in preference to "Mac Mini Speakers".
This will be listed in System Preferences, in addition to the built-in audio output names. (However, it seems that the menulet doesn't get updated immediately. You'll need to log in again.)


As far as I know this feature is still not possible. Mind you many people have discussed this and it is a very south-out feature http://wiki.macromates.com/Suggestions/GUI.


One possible way could be by using a terminal command:

shutdown -h now

This immediately kills all processes and shuts your system down in a fairly nice manner.

As a normal user you could initiate this by

sudo shutdown -h now

But the problem with password prompt remains, this time in the terminal.

Having a closer look to the sudo configuration file /etc/sudoers I found:

...
# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Uncomment to allow people in group wheel to run all commands
# %wheel        ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Same thing without a password
# %wheel        ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
...

Check whether your account is already in the wheel or admin group by issueing groups in the terminal. If that is the case, just uncomment the line with %wheel NOPASSWD or by adding NOPASSWD at the proper position of the admin line above (the wheel line shows you how to do this). For instance:

tatooine-3:~ mallert$ groups
staff com.apple.sharepoint.group.2 everyone localaccounts _appserverusr
admin _appserveradm _lpadmin _appstore _lpoperator _developer
com.apple.access_screensharing com.apple.access_ssh com.apple.sharepoint.group.1

Here my user is already in the admin group, therefore I would just add NOPASSWD in the sudoers line like this:

%admin  ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD ALL

Now you should be able to fire up a

sudo shutdown -h now

without being asked for a password. To finalize my solution you could create an app with automator which executes this sudo shutdown -k now command as a bash script.

If you want to reboot the server instead, use

sudo shutdown -r now


What's the most effective way to cool down a MBP 13

That’s completely normal operating temperature for graphics intensive processes on your machine. The System Management Controller gauges your machine’s temperatures and automatically adjusts the fans accordingly. Furthermore, the SMC will automatically shut your machine down if overheating occurs.

Third party tools (IE, smcFanControl) used to measure temperature and provide users with the ability to manually adjust fan settings is not recommended at all by Apple. Here’s an excerpt from Apple Support on Macbook Operating Temperature:

  While there are third-party utilities that measure the temperature of a notebook computer, it is important to understand that these utilities are not measuring the external case temperature. The actual case temperature is much lower. Never use third-party applications to diagnose possible hardware issues.

The most important thing to do is ensure the back vent isn’t blocked in anyway to ensure adequate heat dissipation. Additionally, keeping your laptop on a hard surface actually helps ensure proper temperature control.

If you still feel uncomfortable, there’s a multitude of laptop cooling stations available out there which will safely help cool the machine during intensive use.


Is the feed that comes from Apple's RSS feed generator out of sync with the app store?

The "appstorefeeds.com" website is not associated with Apple. That appears to be a third-party site that creates its own feeds. My best guess is that it creates these feeds by scraping Apple's own feeds periodically. This type of operation is not something that can guarantee that all updates to Apple's own feeds will be updated live to "appstorefeeds.com".

Not even within Apple's own website infrastructure you get that type of live syncing. I have seen Apple's website out of sync with what is displayed in the charts within iTunes. If you want the closest to the latest information, you should probably check from within iTunes. Hope this helps.


Is there a way to turn off notifications automatically when I connect to AirPlay?

Open System Preferences → Notifications, select Do Not Disturb in the sidebar and enable ‘Turn on Do Not Disturb: When mirroring to TVs and projectors’.

If you enable AirPlay without mirroring, then Do Not Disturb is not activated, but the notifications only appear on your primary monitor anyway.


Adobe Illustrator alternative for the Mac?

You can use Inkscape (Open source/Freeware) to open .AI-Files.


Sending message from Terminal does not work when the Mac is sleeping

The Mac must be powered on to run your script. Only a few Apple specific processes are allowed to run via PowerNap.

pmset

You can use pmset to schedule your Mac to wake in the middle of the night.

  pmset allows you to schedule system sleep, shutdown, wakeup and/or power on. "schedule" is for setting up one-time power events, and "repeat" is for setting up daily/weekly power on and power off events. Note that you may only have one pair of repeating events scheduled - a "power on" event and a "power off" event. For sleep cycling applications, pmset can schedule a "relative" wakeup or poweron to occur in seconds from the end of system sleep/shutdown, but this event cannot be cancelled and is inherently imprecise.

  type - one of sleep, wake, poweron, shutdown, wakeorpoweron
  date/time - "MM/dd/yy HH:mm:ss" (in 24 hour format; must be in quotes)
  time - HH:mm:ss
  weekdays - a subset of MTWRFSU ("M" and "MTWRF" are valid strings)
  owner - a string describing the person or program who is scheduling this one-time power event (optional)

See How to Power On Your Mac at a Specific Date and Time for more details, including a graphical approach, and alternative tools.


I just faced the same problem.. and this might be the solution.

I use MacBook Pro late 2011 and installed Windows 8.1.

(prepare your USB min. 4GB)

ensure you download the Windows support software from Apple Bootcamp.
you will get Windows support folder in the USB.
restart to Windows
open your USB file there..
you will find setup.exe
right click on your setup.exe
go to compability tab
check the box of Run this program in compability mode for (and change the list to Windows 8)
apply
right click again on setup.exe
run as administrator
and click. run the program without getting help.
installing
restart
and voila... everything works.


How to change Font size for PDF in iPad running iOS 9?

I don't think it's possible. I can't find any way to adjust font size on PDFs using iBooks for iOS, nor can I find anything about it online. Apparently, one can only adjust the font size with books in iBooks and not PDFs.


Have you tried simply clicking on the Finder icon in the dock ?

That always works for me.

I would delete my Finder .plist

I would also "zap my PRAM"


Disable sparsebundle backups on Network-attached time machine (Lion)?

I found a github project a short time ago, which handles the "read the backed-up files" part of this question:

https://github.com/torarnv/sparsebundlefs

That is good enough for my purposes.


Can't update iPhone to a specific version : "iphone could not be restored device isn't eligible for the requested build"

Apple signs only the latest version of iOS. Previous iOS versions cannot be installed on iOS devices, even if you do so via an upgrade (and not downgrade). The iOS device will simply not allow you to upgrade to anything but the latest and greatest iOS version.


High CPU and GPU temperature, high fan speed, low activity

Since you've established that you don't have the problem in Safe Mode, but still do after logging in normally again, then it's time to investigate login items, fonts, and kernel extensions

Investigating login items, fonts, and kernel extensions

Let's start with Login Items:

Startup normally
Go to System Preferences > Users & Groups
Select the Login Items tab
Take a note of your Login Items
Now remove all of them by highlighting them and clicking on the - button below
Restart your computer

Now your Mac will boot up without those login items loading. Test this and see if the problem persists:

If the problem goes away you know one (or more) of the Login items were causing the problem. You can then add them back in one by one until you've identified the culprit. Problem solved.
If the problem does persist, it's either a problem with fonts you've installed yourself or with a 3rd party kernel extension. A little more info below:

Fonts:- You can remove any of the fonts you've installed yourself to see if this makes a difference.

Kernel Extensions:- You can open Terminal (found within your Utilites folder) and enter the following command:

kextstat | grep -v com.apple

The above command will list 3rd party kernel extensions (you may need to stretch the Terminal window so it's easier to read). Look for anything you don't remember installing, or something that belongs to software you've removed, or just anything that looks out of place. Remember though, this is a list of 3rd party kernel extensions and therefore any of them could be causing the problem.

A final word

Finally, as an aside, MBP models usually range from about 40ºC (104ºF) to 100ºC (212ºF) depending on whether the CPU is idle or under load. CPU temps (just like ambient temperatures) typically have a bearing on GPU temps too, especially within the extremely confined spaces of a MacBook.

If you'd like, you can refer to the Intel Mac Temperature Database to see the various temperature ranges reported by users. You can also filter the list by model etc.


How to resolve "iTunes could not back up the iPhone because the backup was corrupt"?

From within iTunes navigate to the menu iTunes > Preferences > Devices. Select the backup file, then hit the delete button:


Found it, my fault. I had recently defined a system-wide shortcut associating the symbol "•" to another string. Worst idea ever! As soon as a dot appeared, it was expanded to several characters, all replaced by dots, and so on. Since I usually use 1Password, I only hit the issue a few days after the fact.

Now there's something on the internet in case somebody makes the same mistake :)


Move files to individual folders, using file name as folder naming convention for folder, using Terminal

This should do the trick.

#!/bin/bash
shopt -s nullglob    #avoid problems in directory with no files
ext=avi              #the file extension to search for
for f in *.$ext; do
    d="${f##/}"      #gives us just the filename
    d="${d%.$ext}"   #strips the file extension
    mkdir "$d"       #makes the directory
    mv "$f" "$d/$f"  #moves the file
done


What kind of data does Spotlight index and store on OS X?

Spotlight indexes are kept in an invisible folder at the root of the indexed drive: .Spotlight-V100. When you eject a drive, its index is no longer available for searching.

Spotlight relies on importer plug-ins to extract metadata and content from files. The system ships with importers for many common file formats. Third party applications often include importers for their proprietary file types.

What information is extracted from files and given to Spotlight for indexing is left up to the developer of the importer plug-in. This often includes text content, but can really be any information about the file: author, date received, bit rate, image dimensions, ….

Files are re-indexed automatically when modified. Delete files disappear from the index. I would not bet on every trace of a file disappearing as soon as you delete it.


Making an installable ISO of Bootcamp drive

I would never attempt to handle any aspect of Boot Camp partitioning or data structuring from inside Windows.
Windows has no idea its partition is balanced precariously on a 'fake' MBR disk sitting inside a GUID partition. Too many people touch it & break it.

Instead I would use something designed specifically for Boot Camp installations within the Mac environment. That way you're not tightrope-walking.

As far as I'm aware, Paragon Hard Disk Manager is the only app that can do the task in its entirety, handling Boot Camp & Mac partitions - move, backup/restore etc.

TwoCanoe's WinClone can do the Boot Camp partition, but doesn't handle the Mac partitions.

Carbon Copy Cloner is great for your Mac Partitions, but not Boot Camp. It requires you already have the specialised partitioning structure in place - see Bombich KB: Can CCC back up my BootCamp (Windows) partition?

I own all three, but am not affiliated with any of the recommendations


Where does a large file go when I delete it from a volume?

List the volume's hidden folders in the Terminal with:

$ ls -laht /Volumes/
...
d-wx-wx-wt    3 mmorin  staff   102B 12 Sep 09:35 .Trashes
...

The directory .Trashes is what you're looking for, which is why .Trash does not exist.

In my case, I needed sudo to view the directory, which explains why /Volumes/<volume name>/.Tr did not complete. Nested under the directory 501 are the deleted files:

$ sudo ls -lahtr ../.Trashes/501
total 15943672
-rwxrwxrwx@  1 _unknown  _unknown   1.0G  3 Jan  2018 some file.MP4
-rwxrwxrwx@  1 _unknown  _unknown   999M  3 Jan  2018 another file.MP4
...


Clever sysadmin needed! How to keep SMB shares mounted?

Not certain I understand the context of your question, so let's try this first:

This has worked for me:

Mount the SMB/CIFS share using Finder's Go, Connect to Server....
If prompted for credentials, and given the option, store those credentials in the Keychain
Open System Preferences, Users and Groups; select the Login Items tab near the top
Click the + button at the bottom of the list of login items to "add" an item.
This will produce a new Finder window that allows you to select an item. Simply navigate to the mounted SMB/CIFS share from the Sidebar, select/highlight the SMB/CIFS share of interest, then click the Add button in the bottom right of the Finder window.

This should dismiss the Finder window, and now the share should be mounted at each login. Let us know if this doesn't work/isn't what you needed.


How to force photo thumbnail download on iOS 8.3

I am having a similar problem.  All of my iOS photos have synced up to Photos on the Mac, but photos that I've added on the Mac show up blank in iOS. When I click on a photo, a blank comes up, with a progress clock in the lower right corner. However, that seems to stall at 25%. Even when I go into Edit mode, it appears to start downloading and appears to give up after 25%.

I may try to turn off iCloud Photos and try again, but I have nearly 70k photos and videos.


In what Folder are Dock Applications are stored?

The "links" to the apps are stored in the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist in the key persistent-apps with ~ being the "shortcut" to /Users/yourusername:

In the example above I expanded the entries for App Store  and Launchpad.  The only exception is the Finder.app. Probably it's a fixed entry "injected" by Dock.app itself.

Normally, each user has its own com.apple.dock.plist file.


Have you tried installing it manually? By manually, I mean taking dotNet4.0 from another source other than the WINE build PlayOnMac tries to download and installing it as a separate program but on the same PlayOnMac virtual hard drive Steam is installed on? I've had success with this before.


Can't find Skype photos captured on Skype on my MacBook Air

OK, I did the search and found it in most peculiar place one can think of.

This is on my MBA with 10.9.2.

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ImageKit.RecentPictureService/Data/Library/Images/Recent Pictures

You will find two types of image files there -- TIFF (thumbnail) and standard .png

The .tiff are converted by Skype to a profile pictures, the .png are the originals.

Extra information:

If you need frequent access to that folder but do not want to remember its complicated location

Right click on the folder (Recent Pictures)
Click on Make Alias
Drag the Alias folder to your desktop (you can rename it to what you like)


I would assume not cumulative, based on 15 years on Mac, and continue with -002.

Absolutely there's a point, one never knows what little fixes are included in each Security Update, nor what might be dependent on previous updates.

Bite the bullet and play by the Apple book.


Mojave 10.14.4 update causes mail passwords not to work

I assume you are using Apple Mail to collect your mail?

One solution that seems to work for many is to delete these accounts entirely then go to Sys Prefs > Internet Accounts and re-establish/enter them.  That's why I did and it worked just fine for me (and for others).


My MacBook pro late 2011 15" has 800% usage with kernel_task

So after long time of surfing the web i found this which fixed the issue:

Reboot into recovery mode (Command + R on boot prior to startup chime), select Utilities/Terminal, csrutil disable  (repeat process, use csrutil enable after removing the file), reboot.
Go to About this mac under the apple in the upper left and click on More info
Click on system report
make a note of what it says after Model Identifier (MacBookPro8,2 is mine).
From the Root drive (not home folder): – System  Library – Extensions – IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext (alt-click/View Contents) – Plugins – ACPI_SMC_PlatformPlugin.kext – View Contents – Resources -– find the name from step 3 and move it to a folder that you can find again if needed.
Restart and you’re done (other than enabling SIP).

I can use my Mac again!


An Applescript that batch-copies the Song tag to the Movement tag

To delete the roman numerals, you can use the delRomNum() handler from this script:

--- this text as an example.
set movementText to "Telemann - Concerto in E minor: I. Andante
II. Allegro
III. Largo
IV. Allegro
etc."

set movementText to my delRomNum(movementText) -- delete roman numerals

on delRomNum(t) -- the perl command search and delete any roman numeral (must be a word followed by the period and a space character)
    do shell script "/usr/bin/perl -pe 's/\\b[IVXLCDM]+\\b. //g' <<< " & quoted form of t
end delRomNum

The result of the script is

"Telemann - Concerto in E minor: Andante
Allegro
Largo
Allegro
etc."

Update:

If I understood correctly :

From each line in a string, the command must delete the characters
   from the beginning of the line through the first occurrence of (a
   roman numeral or an arabic numeral) followed by the period and a
   space character, so use this handler:

-- call it, like this --> set movement of thisTrack to my delRomNum(name of thisTrack)
on delRomNum(t)
    (***  from  the contents of the 't' variable (the end of lines must be an Unix Line Endings), so the 'tr' command change the carriage returns (Mac Line Endings) to linefeed (Unix Line Endings)
    the 'perl' command delete the first character in each line through the first occurrence of a word  which contains (a roman numeral or a number) followed by the period and a space character ***)
    do shell script "tr '\\r' '\\n' <<< " & (quoted form of t) & " | /usr/bin/perl -pe 's/^.*?\\b[IVXLCDM0-9]+\\b. //g'"
end delRomNum

Example: the script pass this string to the handler as parameter

Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48 - I. Allegro
Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48 - II. Adagio
Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48 - III. Allegro moderato
Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48 - 4. Allegro  Molto Appassionato
Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48 - 5. Adagio - Allegro Molto
Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48 - 6. Allegro moderato
VII. Adagio - Allegro Non Troppo
8. Allegro Ma Non Tanto
9. Largo
Adagio
etc.

The handler returns:

Allegro
Adagio
Allegro moderato
Allegro  Molto Appassionato
Adagio - Allegro Molto
Allegro moderato
Adagio - Allegro Non Troppo
Allegro Ma Non Tanto
Largo
Adagio
etc.


OS X Mavericks: Disabling Smart Zoom In Safari?

You can disable Smart Zoom by going to System Preferences → Trackpad → Scroll & Zoom and unchecking the Smart zoom gesture.


What does a "" wake reason mean from powerd?

Starting with macOS Sierra, Apple started a total rebuild of the Console app and the log system.

And, as time progressed, Apple's increased focused on privacy has resulted in some macOS log entries to be redacted  to hide information Apple deems as being sensitive.

So, for whatever reason, the appearance of <private> denotes information that has been redacted from the logs. Unfortunately, this sometimes renders parts of the logs worthless in terms of troubleshooting a problem.

Regardless, there are many reasons a Mac can wake up from sleep and it's unlikely that it waking up was related to the problem you had this morning.


Since I updated to iOS 7, my OverDrive Media app crashes every time I try to use it. What to do?

This is already a known issue with the app crashing on iOS 7, they'll put out a fix soon.

  The upgrade to iOS7 has resulted in problems for many OverDrive Media Console users.

  We are working on getting a new version into the App Store. If you do
  not want to wait for the fixed version, you can complete the following
  steps -- but note in advance that they are not ideal as re-installing
  will clear your bookshelf, history, and app settings...

  Uninstall OMC.
  Re-install OMC.
  Re-authorize your device with your Adobe ID when prompted.
  Download your title(s) again.


Mavericks setup fails: "the recovery system can't be created"

Apple recommends that you backup, erase and reinstall the original OS X, then try updating again, as per the instructions below. However, it is feasible to merge steps 3 and 4, installing Mavericks in step 3, then restoring your data to that OS.

  Make a full backup of your hard disk and all of its data (including your Boot Camp partition, which is not normally backed up by Time Machine).
  Erase your hard disk and create a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition.
  Reinstall your original copy of OS X.
  Re-download the OS X upgrade from the Mac App Store and retry your upgrade install.

Source: Apple KB Article HT4649

Alternatively, you could use an app such as iPartition to delete the Recovery HD then extend the startup disk to fill the free space. Since there is now no Recovery HD, the installer should have no problem creating one from scratch.


Does a Contacts Nickname transmit to anyone else; iMessage or email?

I had to laugh - but there's a serious question here, for sure.

Does a nickname in your Contacts show to anyone else?

Empirically, I would say no - neither a nickname you give yourself nor any other contact will be transmitted.
My partner & I have each other listed in Contacts with the nickname "ICE" [In Case of Emergency] yet it doesn't show up in any messages or emails we send to each other.
Similarly, my own nickname of Tetsujin is not seen by others in any communication I send.

I'm pretty sure you're safe asking Siri to call you Sugar Daddy… unless she does it in public, or if you ever intend to pass your vCard to someone, because it certainly will be in the exported card  ;)


Magic Mouse disconnects macOS Mojave (MacBook Pro 2018)

Updating Xcode has limited the disconnects from the keyboard and Magic Mouse (still not perfect but much better).

To update Xcode, open your Terminal and enter xcode-select --install.
You may have to delete the old version of Xcode before installing the latest Xcode. Make sure to also install the command line developer tools.


Hold mouse at the edge of the screen to jump to other monitor on Mac OS X Lion

Not by default in OS X there isn't a way to do that, and I don't know of any third-party utilities that do that either.

You could put the TV on an upper corner of the monitor (see below for ASCII art). Then you'd only be using a corner to transit the screens, not the whole top of the monitor.

               +--------------+
               |              |
               |              |
               |              |
+--------------+--------------+
|              |
|              |
|              |
+--------------+


What does the 'Camera' category in Geekbench 4 refer to?

https://www.geekbench.com/doc/geekbench4-cpu-workloads.pdf
Try going to that PDF. It's from Geekbench themselves and they explain the different methods of each workload.
In this case, Geekbench processes photos rather than take them. It applies filters etc. and decrypts, compresses etc.
From that PDF:

  Camera replicates a photo sharing application like Instagram. Camera merges several
  steps into one workload
  * AES decryption
  * AES key generation using PBKDF HMAC SHA1
  * SHA2 checksum generation
  * JSON parsing
  * JPEG compression and decompression
  * PNG decompression
  * Image compositing
  * Image filters (gaussian blur, contrast)
  * SQLite (INSERT the processed image metadata into a database)
  All steps run on the CPU and are not accelerated by the GPU.


What SSD interface/form factor is compatible with my 13" MBP (Mid 2012)?

Yes! A 2.5 inch SATA SSD like this one from Samsung or this one from Crucial or this one from Western Digital will work.
(Note that those three are just examples.)


You double-tap the home button as usual. The method of killing apps is different, though - just swipe the image of the app's screen up to kill it. This is a very nice feature as you can see what you are doing in an app before you zap it.


Use whereis can not find the file in the Mac

whereis uses a hardcoded list of paths to search. which uses your PATH.

/usr/local/mysql/bin isn't a standard location for binaries, so whereis doesn't search there. Presumably you've added that folder to your path (or the installer did), which means when which searches through your path folders, it finds it.

You can print the list of paths whereis searches by running the following:

$ sysctl user.cs_path
user.cs_path: /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

Whereas your $PATH will generally have many more components. You can print your PATH with:

$ echo $PATH


While the iPhone 6s has a service plan - reduced cost replacement1 for having an issue where the battery reaches an end-of-life state after around a year of use (causing the battery to die at ~30%), older iPhones normally reach this state when their batteries grow old and tired (lithium-ion batteries can only be recharged so many times before they become unable to hold most of the original charge). Your iPhone 5 has a 3-3.5-year-old battery2, and thus it's the battery's fault that the phone is dying so quickly.

The only fix is to replace your iPhone's battery, something you can safely attempt yourself following this video or bring your phone to the Apple Store to have them do it (cost is usually 80-100 dollars without AppleCare).

1 The battery malfunctions are blamed on a manufacturer leaving the batteries exposed to ambient air too long; note that it is not a safety issue, merely a convenience issue. Recall information here.

2 Based on a release date of September 2014.

tl;dr: It's the old battery's fault, bring it to an Apple Store and get them to replace the battery to fix the issue.


How to send a notification to a device when it connects to a WiFi network without a specific app?

You can stop that in the future by:

Changing: File Name

Captive network assistant

to

No More captive network assistant

in System/Library/CoreServices

So the file is still there.

If you want to change it back just change the name back to original


There is an error in the postinstall script. The first line should contain only one hash (#):

#!/usr/bin/env bash

If the .pkg works with installer and Installer.app, then it is a correct package. All other tools are made by third parties and may not support the latest pkg formats and features.

Lacking Permission?

Using sudo in your package script may cause the script to pause forever or instantly fail. How will the sudo command interact with the user to get the super user's credentials?

Remove sudo and make your script test for permission to install before continuing, otherwise print an error and exit:

if [[ $EUID -ne 0 ]]; then
  echo "You must be a root to run this script" 2>&1
  exit 1
fi

It is the responsibility of installer to gain the appropriate authorisation rights and run the package's scripts using those rights. Within your package, specify that it needs administrator rights to ensure this happens.

Logs and Errors

Use the verbose flag with installer to see each step of the installation process and to see errors:

sudo installer -verbose -pkg /Library/Virtualbox.pkg -target /

Apple Package Tools

Installer packages on OS X are typically built with the tools pkgbuild and productbuild. These two Apple tools support pre and post scripts; see the --scripts flag.

AutoPkg

Mac system administrators often use the open source autopkg tool to create packages:

  AutoPkg is an automation framework for OS X software packaging and distribution, oriented towards the tasks one would normally perform manually to prepare third-party software for mass deployment to managed clients.

You may find AutoPkg is a better approach to simplifying the setting up of new Macs.


Is there an iPad whiteboard that can also be used on desktop machines?

This seems like it would be a good solution for you. No installation required, it should run on almost any desktop.
A Web Whiteboard

This product also may meet your needs.
NotateIt


How to get back the "Login Window..." icon in the menu bar?

It can be enabled via System Preferences > Users & Groups > [Unlock] > Login Options > Show fast user switching menu as...


Apple Mail is not syncing completely with Gmail account

Rebuild does not show up in the activity window, even when it is doing things in the background. I've experienced this first hand in the past. So, give it some time.

However, rebuilding I think only helps rebuild the index file based on the messages stored on your computer. It does not compare notes with the server, I believe.

Honestly, I would just remove the account and add it again, so that it downloads your entire account back to your computer. Not an elegant solution, but it has done the trick for me a few times.


OS X El Capitan (10.11.1) guest user can login even if it is disabled

Click on the padlock icon to unlock it (enter password if required)

Select the Gastbenutzer (Guest User) in the left hand pane

Untick "Allow guests to log in to this computer"

Click on the padlock to lock it


Zoom and center selected portion of screen on MacOS

This is not exclusively a feature of macOS Mojave. This is an old, built-in feature from OS X.

Navigate to:

System Preferences → Accessibility → Zoom

Set Zoom Style to  Picture-in-picture .

You can adjust the coordinates of the selected portion by clicking  More Options...  →  Adjust Size And Location .


MacBook Pro 13in Late 2012 v.s. MacBook 12in Early 2015

According to the specifications you have given, you most likely have a i7 3520M on your MBP and a Core M 5Y71 on the MacBook. If you compare the benchmarks done on the CPUs, you'll see that the i7 excels both on CPU as well as the GPU benchmarks.

Your current MBP is more powerful than the Core M MacBook that you are considering. It will be kind of a downgrade if you purchase it. Wait until WWDC 2016 to see if Apple upgrades it MacBook product line.


File tree on Linux via ifuse doesn't match ipad

I installed the app shellfish. This let me ssh from the ipad into the linux box. I couldn't figure out the IP address of the network (via usb). I installed the app VLC and it identified the IP address of the ipad. From that point, I could nmap on the linux box to find the IP address of the linux box. I cannot ssh into the ipad. nmap verifies that the port is not open. But as I said the I can ssh in the direction from the ipad to the linux box. This did require setting up sshd on the linux box.I suppose now that I have addresses I could set up samba but ssh/sftp is fine. Probably more secure. I only allow the IP address of the ipad to ssh into the linux box.


Changed the mod for ~/.. directory by mistake, made it 744, can't boot anymore

I would do two things to restore a Mac in this situation.

boot to recovery mode and run Disk Utility - repair the drive, the volume and then repair permissions.
Boot to recovery mode and run the installer. That should fix or log the exact directory that has improper ACL/permissions and re-create all basic mount points.

The installer log can be read in recovery mode boot if step 2 doesn't fix things and we can perhaps refine exactly what directory or directories are now messed up. There is a chance that you had a separate failure and your chmod was coincidental to the issue as opposed to causative.


Cannot Connect to local HTTP Servers - Synology

Switch to another local domain, such as .lan, instead of the reserved .local. Bonjour/ZeroConf reserves the use of .local. If you are using DHCP, your server can handle this configuration.

Alternatively, hardcode the server's IP address in /etc/hosts with the line:

a.x.y.z      <servername>


How to get my files of a Windows-formatted HDD?

All newer Mac OS X systems are capable of reading all common Windows file systems (FAT/FAT32/NTFS) right out of the box. So it shouldn't be a problem to access the contents of the internal HDD connected to your drive dock, given that the Unitek is working with your Mac.

Since you didn't use any special backup software (generating unaccessible file formats) the same should be valid for your external HDD.


Mac OS X - File Open Dialog: Can't sort or resize columns


Can I get a 'modern' browser for Mac OS X (10.7.5) without upgrading to OS X El Capitan?

You can currently use Chrome, the world's most popular browser, but not for long. Google are dropping support for OS X versions before 10.9 from April of this year. A Chrome version you download now will keep working, of course, but it won't get updates.

However, it's unsafe to use the Internet from OS X 10.7.5, regardless of which browser you use. It's not received any security updates for years, so it's full of unpatched known vulnerabilities.


Can I use an iPhone 6s in Sri Lanka if I purchase it in Dubai?

If you buy a LOCKED phone, you can only use it with the carrier to which it is locked. An UNLOCKED phone is usable on any carrier in any country, assuming it uses the same frequency bands. You would need to purchase a local SIM card for every network on which you need to use the phone.

Fortunately the iPhone 6s supports more bands than almost any other phone, so it should work in almost every country.

For this flexibility, there is a price - an unlocked phone is usually much more expensive than a locked phone. But for the ability to use it anywhere in the world, that additional price might be worth it.


Like in old versions, it be can't removed. The work around is the same: the system default can be overridden to a new key combination. The hotkey must be associated with a context menu item name (ie. an app specific menu item). The name must match exactly.

Systems apps use the name Close to mean close window, along with iTerm2. Some other apps use the more verbose Close Window. Remap both to get decent app coverage. Note that some apps may use other unique names that mean close window. Separate entries will have to be made for these apps to remap it globally.

Navigate to System Preferences -> Keyboard.

Select the Shortcuts tab, then App Shortcuts in the left pane.

Select the + at the bottom of the window to add a new shortcut.

To remap it globally, select All Applications in the Application field. To change Cmd-w on a specific application instead of globally, select that instead.

Set Menu Title to Close. It is case sensitive and must match exactly.

Set Keyboard Shortcut to the desired key combination. I set it to an obscure value so it's essentially 'disabled'.

Click Add to finalize the key shortcut. The right pane should now show a new entry for Close with your key combination (see the first image for an example).

Add another hotkey entry with Application set to All Applications and Menu Title set to Close Window for additional coverage.

Close the menu.

The change takes effect immediately, including with open apps.


According to Apples Information the iPads should not be affected.

Apple Support Document:

  With a low battery state of charge, a higher chemical age, or colder
  temperatures, users are more likely to experience unexpected
  shutdowns. In extreme cases, shutdowns can occur more frequently,
  thereby rendering the device unreliable or unusable. iOS 10.2.1
  (Released January 2017) includes updates for previous models of iPhone
  to prevent them from unexpectedly shutting down. This includes a
  feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and
  iPhone SE to dynamically manage the instantaneous performance peaks,
  only when needed, to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting
  down. This capability was also extended to iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus
  with iOS 11.2, and we will continue improving our power management
  feature in the future. This feature's only intent is to prevent
  unexpected shutdowns so that the iPhone can still be used.

So the feature (or issue as some see it) is not present on the iPad.
The iPad under the circumstances that the battery can't deliver the necessary power would shut down and not try to throttle performance.


open dict://“$word” stopped working for Chinese after upgrading to Big Sur

This seems to be a bug with the open command when handling certain characters—for instance, open http://www.google.com?q=中 gives a similar error message. It might be worth reporting this bug to Apple; in the meantime, you can use the following (admittedly less than elegant) workaround:
osascript -l JavaScript -e "(a = Application.currentApplication()).includeStandardAdditions=true; a.openLocation('dict://' + encodeURIComponent('中'))"

This uses JavaScript for Automation to encode and open the URL, just as open does. To use the generic $word format, you would just make the following substitution:
osascript -l JavaScript -e "(a = Application.currentApplication()).includeStandardAdditions=true; a.openLocation('dict://' + encodeURIComponent('$word'))"


Change Date Created based on the filename

So after some hunting I stumbled on this little AppleScript on Mac OS X Hints. Thanks Krioni! I'm sure with some tinkering I could modify it to work with my filenames, but I just batch edited the image filenames to fit in with the script.

on open files_
    repeat with file_ in files_
        tell application "Finder"
            set file_name to name of file_
            set od to AppleScript's text item delimiters
            set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"_"}
            set new_creation_date to second text item of file_name
            set new_creation_date to new_creation_date & "1000"
            set file_ to POSIX path of file_
            do shell script "touch -t " & new_creation_date & " " & quoted form of file_
            set AppleScript's text item delimiters to od
        end tell
    end repeat
end open

It simply looks for the second text item of the filename in between underscores and uses that as the date. It then adds "1000" as the time to the touch command. Hopefully this will help someone else out there.

The original thread can be found here.


Got a new iPhone - where am I supposed to receive the verification code?

Don't log in during set-up, but login afterwards using Settings. At that time you'll be able to request an authentication code via SMS.


You don't need to.

Apple is regarding the last GM and last public beta as the final release of Yosemite and not offering an update path. Instead, wait for 10.10.1 and the Mac App Store will include this as an update path putting you back on track.


Mail App keeps hanging (not crashing) on Yosemite 10.10.3

I have had the same problem since updating to Yosemite. None of the advice posted on any website seems to work until I tried this and so far Mail is working fine
https://miapple.me/fixing-mac-os-x-10-10-yosemite-mail-not-responding/
give it a shot


You can open multiple instances of a mac application using open -n terminal command. Eg. open -n image2.pdf

More information.


Why there is no standard way to uninstall programs in MacOS?

The standard way, assuming the program is following all of the App guidelines Apple lays out, is to drag the .app bundle from the installation location (usually /Applications) to the Trash.

There are some exceptions to this, but for the most part that's how you do it.

The program files that get left behind in ~/Library/Application Support can also be cleaned up if you wish, but they're generally considered benign and can be ignored.

There are uninstall helpers that make the removal of an application and all its support files much easier. So you don't have to Google for details on how to remove things. Take a look at TrashMe or AppCleaner -- both of these tools attempt to automate the search and removal of support files that go along with applications. In the case of TrashMe, it also helps you uninstall widgets and System Configuration plugins, which is handy. I personally prefer TrashMe.

Some software integrates so deeply (MacFuSE or Growl for example) in to the system that the only way to uninstall it via a script. In these cases there is usually an uninstall script in the .dmg file that you downloaded to install the software or one provided by the developer on their website.


iPhone 6s unresponsive display when unlocked

I had a similar problem. It occurred after iphone music app became stuk while loading. Phone wouldn't turn off and wouldn't respond to swipe or changeing the app.
I pressed down simultaneously on the home button and the off button on the side . After awhile the phone shut down and the slider bar appeared and I was able to shut the phone off. Than able to turn it on and things are working now.


Found the problem myself:

The single-dash option -I does not accept =. The convention is that double-dash options -- require =.

I fixed by using -I ./subfolder instead.


How to hit "right-control" in VirtualBox on a remote Linux system over RDP via CoRD?

I was able to reprogram the VirtualBox Host Key.  It seems to think my right-command key is a left alt, but the end result is the same, it works now.


GMail and Outlook Attachment Not Showing in Mail after Upgrading to Mountain Lion

There is a free online winmail.dat reader at Winmail.dat. The usual warnings about uploading documents to an unknown website apply, so don't use this for confidential stuff.


Re-Enable Apple Java 6 SE from Command Line?

Two things are needed worst case (and assuming you are still on 10.6 Snow Leopard):

Re-download the SE 6 and install it
Manually enable browser plug in if you care to have that functionality:

 ln -sf /System/Library/Java/Support/Deploy.bundle/Contents/Resources/JavaPlugin2_NPAPI.plugin "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin"
 ln -sf /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Commands/javaws /usr/bin/javaws

There is great coverage of the how and why I came up with these steps from Rich Trouton's blog:

Re-enable the Apple Java 6 plug-in for use with web browsers
Java for OS X 2012-006 and Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 11

Apple also has similar steps in their KB article about the move from SE 6 to 7 here:

Java for OS X 2012-006: How to re-enable the Apple-provided Java SE 6 applet plug-in and Web Start functionality


How to use Catalina window snapping feature?

There's no "translucent box" in Catalina, that was for previous versions of macOS.  To do that, you would click and hold the green button.
Catalina uses the "hover" method.  Hover over the green button and you'll get a popup allowing you to select "Full Screen," "Tile Left," and "Tile Right."
Personally, I've found macOS' window snapping feature a bit light on functionality.  I recently started using BetterSnapTool that allowed me to create custom snap areas anywhere on my desktops (multiple monitors).  I can even assign shortcuts so that I can snap my open windows to the preset monitor and size.  It costs $3, but (IMO) it is well worth it.
I've tested various other window managers that didn't work for me, but you might get better mileage out of them

Magnet ($3).  Intuitive and very useful. I couldn't use it because it conflicted with Think or Swim trading platform.

Spectacle (Free).  Worked well in El Capitan, however it's no longer maintained and was crashing in Catalina, though it may have also had a compatibility issue with Think or Swim.

Moom ($10).  Moom is short for Move and Zoom.  It works on a grid system and has the ability to remember layouts

Divvy ($14).  Another grid based window manager .  It allows you to "divvy up" your screen into snappable areas.

Rectangle (Free). Allows you to resize windows with keyboard shortcuts.  There's about 20 predefined shortcuts, and no way to create custom snap points/sizes.

Hookshot ($8).  Based on Rectangle and from the same developer. Uses modifier keys and mouse gestures to snap windows.


How can I sync mail older than two weeks on my iOS 4.1 device?

The reason for this is that the Exchange Administrator has used the iPhone Configuration Utility on the server to adjust how many weeks of mail you are allowed to sync. It is not possible to override this value on the phone itself without jailbraking.


No. Purchases are final. What you could do is see if family sharing allows you to share purchases across accounts.


There are a few possibilities of where the passwords are being saved.  To clarify, do you know if you are using iCloud Keychain on your devices?  Keychain Access works in collaboration with iCloud Keychain, which allows you to share keychains with your other devices.  So it's possible they are syncing between devices via your Apple ID if you are signed in and have enabled that feature.

You can check the saved passwords on iOS as mentioned in ankiiiiiii's post.  By going to settings, Accounts & Passwords, the looking under App & Website Passwords.

On your Mac with OS X Mavericks 10.9 or later with Safari open, Choose Safari, Preferences, then click on Passwords.  You will have to input your computer password, then you can select a website to view your saved password for it.

Here are Apple's resources about this topic:

Set up iCloud Keychain

What is Keychain Access on Mac?

Get help with iCloud Keychain


Where to view app memory usage in iPod Touch?

As reported in this webpage: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201656.

You can go to Settings to see how much storage you've used by following: Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage.

In there you'll see a list of your apps, and how much storage each one uses. Tap an app for more detailed information about its usage.


I have been using VueScan with my Epson slide scanner, with better results than the rather ropey SW that came with it.
50 bucks isn’t much, and you can try it first for free to at least see if it will work with your scanner at all.
Otherwise, I can only wish you luck (I’m no HW or SW expert…).


iPod touch 4G is stuck and cannot be restarted

First try to simply reboot your iPod and retry sync.

If you still have the same problem maybe the media database on the iPod is corrupted/broken try to uncheck sync Music, sync Movies, Sync TV Shows, Sync Podcasts and Sync iTunes U.

  ...

Then sync

Once the sync is done recheck the sections you want to sync and sync again.

If this still doesn't work reconnect your iPod to the computer. Interupt any sync that could be starting.

Then restore the iPod.

Follow this procedure.

At the end of the procedure you can chose to restore from a backup. If that works, it's fine.

If restoring from the backup doesn't work. Then retry this procedure and at the end choose to setup a new iPod instead of restoring from a backup.

If you cannot do any of the above. Or if it doesn't work the next step is to try recovery mode.This answer explains how to put your device into recovery mode.

Once in recovery restore your iPod with the latest available firmware.

Once this is done you can try to restore your device from backup... If restoring from backup doesn't work again try this procedure and setup a new iPod.

The last resort solution is the DFU mode. Setup you device to DFU mode as described in the same answer as for recovery mode.

Once this is done again you can try to restore your device from backup... If restoring from backup doesn't work again try this procedure again and setup a new iPod.


How do I add German public holidays to my Outlook 2016 OSX App

It’s true, in Mac Office 2016 there’s no longer an option to add holidays. Also, you can’t download a *.ics calendar file and import it into Mac Office 2016. Both workaround only apply to Mac Office 2011, only.

The only way around this is to add your Exchange/CalDAV account to Apple Calendar App. Than import your German-Holiday.ics file to your Exchange account. Finally open Outlook and wait until all calendar items have been synced.

UPDATE Juni 2019: I am getting back to my original answer from 2 years ago. In the meantime Microsoft silently added a couple feature to open ics files. Outlook still lacks a import feature in the Import... menu. But user Rick Troiani pointed out a really nice workaround.

Solution A: Drag-and-drop your *.ics file right onto my Outlook Calendar.

...You can also use the following workflow:

Solution B: Drag-and-drop your *.ics file onto the Outlook icon within the macOS Dock.

Solution C: Right click your *.ics file in macOS Finder > Open with Outlook.


Corsair GS 180 slowdown in Macbook Pro over a year's time

How long did you have TrimEnabler running?  It will only help over time, when through deleting files the SSD knows that the file clusters are no longer needed.

You can try to enable it, create a very large file (that takes up a significant chunk of your free space) and then delete it.

cd /tmp
mkfile 10240m 10Gigfile
rm 10Gigfile


To do this completely from the keyboard, go to System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts and enable Full Keyboard Access to All Controls, or press ⌃F7.

You can then ⇥ between the buttons, and space to select.
↩ will always select the default button (in this case, Save).


iTunes: subscribe to a podcast without downloading it?

Go to the podcast page in your iTunes Library by selecting it in the menu bar, then click the gear next to the title, then, under "This Computer", select Download Episodes > Off


Is it possible to encrypt a hard drive that is dual booting ubuntu using rEFInd?


The mis-alignment is a result of using a variable width font. Switch to a fixed-width font in the Geeklet and you'll see the text aligned similar to how it is in the Terminal app.

Open the Geeklet editor and under the Style section press the Click here to set font & color button.

If you like the way your content looks in the Terminal.app you can use the Monaco font for your Geeklet -- that's the same font Terminal.app uses. You see your Terminal.app font settings under Terminal > Preferences... on the Settings tab.


How to cure Mail of being stuck on one message?

A corrupted email message can get stuck on your email system, like clogged pipe in your plumbing. In my experience the problem is always one of those joke emails that has been forwarded countless times.

Web Access To Email

Solution is to use the Web interface to your email provider rather than your email client app. In the web browser, find the offending email and delete. If you really need that message - put it in a folder that doesn’t sync if you can.

Then return to your email client. Your pipes should be clear again. You may need to do a Rebuild command to reconstruct your local cache.


The photos will remain on your current phone. You're only deleting the backup of a different phone and not affecting the phone you're using at all.


Merge existing iPhone contacts to my iCloud

I found a solution. I was lucky and actually had contacts in my Gmail account separate from my iCloud (no overlap or duplicates between the two). So I just exported from Gmail in vCard form and then used the iCloud web interface (www.icloud.com) to import them into my Contacts. Everything is working great now.


Is it possible to add funds to a US iTunes store account with Paypal?

Yes, you can only use PayPal with iTunes US, and in that PayPal, you'll need to have a US bank account or have your locations and any credit cards/debit's on there will have to be located in the US as iTunes checks for that as well. It all has to be in the US, and cannot have any other bank or CC company for any other country.


Choose custom colour for shape fill in Pages 5.2

First, be sure to change the fill type to Colour fill if the default template has Advanced Image Fill selected.

Then, as noted by @grgarside, select the colour wheel icon.  See the screenshot showing its location.

From here you can select the sliders.  If you know the custom colour code, either HEX or RGB, then it can be entered into the color picker.  Otherwise, use the Eye dropper color picker to sample your color from another part of your screen.  For example, if you have your custom color in website, or other document, select it with the eye dropper and then it will paste into your object.


How can I see where a program writes to my disk?

If I get it right, you want to monitor all file-system operations of your app when you launch it and when it's running ?
Rather than finding each and every byte that this program has ever written to your hard-drive.

For the first case I have two recommendations:

fseventer

Instruments.app from /Developer/Applications/ (you need Xcode for that)

Choosing "File Activity" from the templates

Supplement from 2011-12-22

And for the command-line, copied from here

sudo opensnoop -p PID

Shows you all of the files that are being accessed on your system by a particular process (by passing its PID)


Alarm clock OS X with automator and password on wake up

There is an scheduler for sleeping and waking up OS X in System Preferences > Energy Saver > Schedule....

Unlike the alarm in the iOS you can set timers in Automator with Pause action. It will work even your Mac is asleep. Playing iTunes playlist does not require password for the running Automator workflow. You can make a workflow of pausing until your preferred time and then play your playlist. You should set the scheduler to wake up before the pause passed.

After starting the workflow you can sleep your Mac.


Sierra frozen at login screen - keyboard and mouse unresponsive

Booting to Single User Mode showed some valuable troubleshooting information.  It turns out I had some bad third-party kexts installed in /System/Library/Extensions.  Removed those and now all is well.


How can I change Finder's sidebar icons in macOS?

I'd love to be able to change the icons without an add-on. You get better visibility and much faster access.

Best thing I've managed to do for easy visibility is to add emoji to the names of the folders.

But of course you likely don't want to add emoji to the folders themselves. Instead you can put an alias to the folder in the sidebar, and have that alias contain the emoji.

I created ~/Library/Sidebar Aliases/ folder and dropped a number of aliases in there (Command-Option drag the folder). Then I renamed those to include whatever emoji icons I want to help visibility, and added those aliases to the sidebar.

Works perfectly:

Bonus: You can make the names themselves more descriptive. I've got a number of network folders in my sidebar and they all have the same name "Photos" for example.

Using an alias, I can have my smb://<server>.local/Collating/Photos/ folder appear in the sidebar as  Collating Photos, without touching the actual folder name itself.

Important Note: The only noticeable downside to this approach is that you can no longer drag and drop files into the sidebar aliases, as you can when there's an actual folder in the sidebar. Not a big issue for me, but worth noting.


What are the weights of the San Fransisco font?

Ah, I've got the solution:

In text:

Light
Regular
Medium
Semibold
Bold
Heavy

In display:

Ultralight
Thin
Light
Regular
Medium
Semibold
Bold
Heavy
Black


I had the same issue. Tried working offline - nothing.  Finally SUCCESS!  I unchecked the "sync to server" box that was checked and set to "every two minutes."  The constant syncing must have hung up the program.  Accounts deleted without an issue after that.  I have Outlook 2011 on a Mac.


Why did iOS 11.0.1 delete a year worth of photos?

Apple didn't delete the photos, it may have optimized your phone's storage to free up space for the update.

Those photos should still be on http://www.iCloud.com under your Apple ID account if everything in your iPhone's iCloud settings was setup properly.


How do I use screencapture for capturing floating windows?

I wrote a command line utility that wraps over screencapture and the Quartz windowing library.

Grab it here: https://github.com/thismachinechills/pyscreencapture

Use it like this:

./screencapture.py Skype -t Current Call -w all_windows above_window


Why does the icon of a PC show a blue screen?

Because it was Apple's way of making fun of Windows. No reason other than that.


No, rEFIt is software and therefore should not affect the hardware warranty.

However, if you're concerned about that and want to avoid trouble (there's always the odd thickheaded customer service rep, even at Apple), you can simply wipe your drive and do a clean OS X reinstall before you send your machine in for service (and restore from backup once you get it back). rEFIt does not modify your EFI or anything else, so there'll be no trace left of it if you do so.


Tagging Faces in Aperture 3 and syncing with Facebook tags

If a face is already duplicated (i.e., there're two faces of the same person), you can pick up (from the faces cockboard page) the 2nd face and drop into the 1st. Aperture or iPhoto will merge these 2 faces into 1.

If a face isn't already duplicated and you're trying to prevent duplication, prior to 10.7 Lion, you set the email address of the entry in Address Book to that in Facebook. Apparently, this is the field that Aperture/iPhoto uses to match up Facebook & Address Book.

For 10.7 Lion, Address Book has introduced a field called Profile->Facebook. By all looks, this looks to be the new field for matching, but Lion is too new to have confirmation from Google of my suspicion.


To get around this problem I went to the option I wanted with the arrow keys then got frustrated when I couldn`t click.

What I proceeded to do was start in the bottom right with the options key and push all the buttons across and up the next two rows skipping the Cap Locks. The continue button then illuminated. To then select it I pushed the space bar. Hope this works


What should the standard contents of $DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH be?

I have checked on clean installs of Lion at 10.7.3 and 10.7.3 with server and both have the $DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH variable unset. Installing Xcode doesn't change that variable either on the current OS.


Trouble syncing multiple Apple products between multiple computers

If you really want to sync between multiple computers, it is technically possible. You have to place your iTunes library folder in a location that can be accessed by all of the systems on the network. Then, when you want to access that shared library, hold down the Option key (Shift key on Windows) while iTunes is opening. This will bring up a dialog box with an option to select another library. Click it, and browse to the shared network folder with the iTunes library in it. iTunes will open with this library, and you should be able to sync your device on that computer.

The downside? Unless you have a server or network attached storage device, the computer that is actually hosting the iTunes library folder has to be running more or less all the time. Also, iTunes may not maintain all of its purchase authorizations between computers. If these things don't bother you, then this is definitely an option.


iCal failing to sync calendars with an Exchange 2010-based server - 'ical needs a valid email address'

Have your Exchange Administrator check to make sure your account is on the GAL (Global Address List). There is an option to hide accounts that might be selected.


How to run a shell command inside a zsh-theme with Oh My Zsh

First, $() commands don't run inside of single-quotes. Changing your exterior quotes to "" should fix this. This also fixes the issue where the interior quotes were pre-maturely closing the string (as you can see from the syntax highlighting).
Second, the interior part seems to be broken on my computer since you're using a fixed regular expression. The server returns an IPv6 IP address for me, but that regular expression is looking for an IPv4 one. You can fix that by changing the regular expression (outside the scope of this question), but I'll suggest using jq. It lets you use a command line utility to parse JSON data. Again, if you're connecting to that server with an IPv4 address, then this change won't be needed (until your ISP in the future updates you to an IPv6 address).
I therefore end up with
"%F{white}%M %n %y %j $(curl -s https://api.myip.com | jq .ip -r) %F{green}%2c%F{blue} [%f "


Where do you report serious flaws with iOS7?

You can provide feedback to Apple regarding iOS at Apple's feedback page relevant for the device that you wish to feedback for:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipodtouch.html

If you are an Apple Developer, you can report bugs using Apple Bug Reporter.


You might be making this more complicated than it needs to be. If you want the code from the other site in an applescript, that page provides guidance. You don't need Automator to simply run that script.

Copy the script text onto the clipboard. Launch the Script Editor. It should open a new and empty document. Paste the copied script. The text should appear as whatever your default is for new (or uncompiled) text, e.g. probably in a purple monospaced font.

Confirm that everything is hunky dory by compiling the script: Type Command-K (or from the menus: Script > Compile). It should take on the same appearance as what you saw on the other site, e.g. some words coloured or bolded (emboldened?). Depending upon whatever, you may find that the quotation marks have been altered and you get an error. They need to be straight double quotation marks, e.g. "" and not “”.

Then try it out. If it works as desired, save it somewhere easy to access, e.g. the Safari scripts folder. Then, if you have the Script menu enabled (check the box in the Script Editor General preferences), you will be able to run the script from the script icon that shows up on the right end of the menu bar (near the clock) whenever Safari is the active app.

/Users/username/Library/Scripts/Applications/Safari

NB I'd suggest saving it as a script (as opposed to application) unless you have a specific need that requires that.


How to delete all photos from the iOS 7 camera roll WITHOUT importing them?

On iOS 7

Open the Photos App and make sure you are in the “Photos” section from the three icons at the bottom of the screen;
Look at the top of the screen and make sure the view is “Moments;”
Now you can tap individual thumbnails one at a time to select them, or you can tap the word “Select” that appears at the top of each grouping to select an entire grouping.

On iOS 6

Go to Settings → General → Usage → Photos & Camera;
Swipe on the “Camera Roll” entry;
A “Delete” button appears.

This solution does not work on iOS 7 (last tested on iOS 7.0.4). It is probably a bug.

Any iOS, but using a computer

If you have iOS 7, you can use Image Capture on your Mac to delete photos from the iPhone without importing them:

Plug the iPhone to your Mac with the iPhone cable;
Quit iPhoto if it launches automatically;
Launch Image Capture;
Select the photos you want to delete;
Click the red icon to delete the photos.


If the app is a driver or some kind of system hack, then you better read it's documentation or contact it's tech support team to find out how to uninstall it.

For most apps, simply quit the app and drag it to the trash.

Most mac apps won't create much extra "junk". It will leave a few configuration files/etc around, but they're usually really small and you want them to be there, incase you ever decide to install the app again.

If you really want to get rid of it all:

Open Finder, and bring up the Go menu. Hold down the Option key to make the Library menu item visible, and click on it.

Type the name of the app into the top right search box (eg: "TextMate"), and when it suggests "Filename contains: textmate" in the menu, click on that. By default, it will search "This Mac", click on "Library" to only search the folder you were in before doing the search.

Make sure everything you see is actually related to the app, and move it to the trash. When a file is selected, the "Path Bar" at the bottom of the window will tell you where the file is, which can help figure out what app it belongs to.

Be careful, modifying anything in a Library folder can screw up your system. Don't do it at all unless you have a backup to restore to incase something goes wrong. It's usually pretty safe though, most files in the Library folder in your user's home folder will be re-created as necessary, if something important has been deleted.

You might also want to search your entire system instead of just ~/Library, but if the app installs anything elsewhere in the system then that's a pretty good sign that you should be checking the documentation for the correct uninstall procedure and/or contacting their tech support, to make sure it is actually safe to delete those files without screwing up your system.

If you are the type of person who regularly installs random apps from the internet and then deletes most of them... then you should either test these apps in a virtual machine or at least using the "Guest" account feature (where pretty much everything is deleted as soon as you log out).


How to reset device passcode on iPad, as erase procedure doesn't seem to work?

To put your iPad in restore mode:

Connect your iPad to your computer (iPad and Computer turned on, iTunes opened on computer)
Press and hold Sleep/Wake + Home button until the screen goes black
Release the Sleep/Wake-Button but KEEP PRESSING THE HOME BUTTON until the iTunes logo appears on the iPad. Now in iTunes you should be able to press "Restore".

(The iPad Software will download, if the iPad exits restore mode while the download happens repeat the steps when the software finished downloading...)

NOTE: All the data on the iPad will be lost.


Automatically Inhibit sleep while transferring files over the network?

You can install 3rd part app Caffeine. you can turn it on to prevent your mac from sleeping. Other popular apps are Anti Sleep and Amphetamine. I'm pretty sure all 3 are free. Amphetamine is also available from the App Store. I personally use Caffeine and it works well. It adds a coffee cup icon to menu bar so you can easily turn it on or off.

Caffeine may actually come with newer system upgrades so check your Applications folder.


grep ^\. not working as expected in Mac terminal

The grep pattern matches lines that begin with a dot. The output of ls -al has no such lines.
Try ls -a | grep '^\.' and see the difference.


Try looking for these fonts in Format > Font > Show Fonts.  That should always give you a full list even if the dropdown menu inside Pages for some reason does not.


Outlook 2016 can't connect to Exchange 2010 server after updgrading to macOS 10.12.5

I am having the same issue - called Microsoft and they said it is a known issue with the latest 1701 builds of Outlook at this time. They are working on a patch but in the interim the only suggestion is to install an older copy.

The version that does appear to work is v15.30 of build 1701.

The last two versions of that build - v15.33 and v15.34 have the same issue.