Assuming you're using some version of iOS 11?

If you have raise to wake enabled you can simply raise your iPhone then swipe right on the lock screen.

If you don't have raise to wake enabled or any for any other reason this might be faster - press the power button and immediately swipe right on the lock screen.

The newer iPhones in particular load the camera very quickly so by the time you finish the right swipe the camera is auto-focused and ready to go.

Another tip would be to make sure you have the camera icon docked on your home screen. This would allow you to access it quickly if you're in an app. You could try using control centre too, but you would have to swipe up from the bottom twice in most apps.

Currently there are no hardware shortcuts like this on iOS.


Is it possible to install a custom ringtone using iTunes 12.7 or later?

Yes. You can manually drag your ringtones into the device connected with iTunes.

Apple has an updated article here.


Yosemite keeps asking to install Java runtime, while it's installed

Install the SDK instead of the JRE.

I had a similar issue: I installed the JRE and ran the webpage-based test that said I installed successfully. But my java-based app wouldn't run, and running java -version in the console said Java was not installed. On a whim I decided to install the full SDK and now it all works.


Just bought MBPr and cannot connect to appstore

Check the date and time / timezone. If it's incorrect you won't be able to connect to the App Store (or much else for that matter.)


How to set AirPlay device name of the hosting computer?

Here's what I did to rename the Computer label in the list of available AirPlay speakers in iTunes.

In Finder, go to your Applications folder.
Hold the control button and click on the iTunes icon. You'll get a pop-up menu.
Choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. You should now see a Contents folder in your Finder window.
Use Finder to navigate to the Contents > Resources >  English.lproj folder.
Open the Localizable.strings file in a good text editor.

You may want to make a backup copy of Localizable.strings before going any further!

TextEdit isn't good enough. It'll show you gibberish. I used TextWrangler, which is free.
Use Command+F to search for pb7r8smvm5. You should see two lines that look like this:

  <key>pb7r8smvm5</key>
  <string>Computer</string>
  Change Computer to whatever label you want (e.g., Living Room).
  Save the Localizable.strings file.
  Quit iTunes and then open it again. Your new label should appear in the list of speakers.

  These instructions are for Mac OS X. Windows instructions are available.


Check your httpd.conf file in /private/etc/apache2/ and see if you have the line:

listen 443

If it's there, comment out by prepending the line with '#'

# listen 443

The restart your server service.


How can I delete all message attachments?

Source.  This can be done with both Attachments and Images:

Launch the Messages app and open a conversation that has attachments you want to get rid of.
Tap on the blue “i” button at the top right of the app.

In the new interface that appears, scroll down and then tap and hold on one of the attachments in the grid view to reveal an Action Menu.
Tap on the More… button to select the attachment you were just tapping and holding on.

A blue check mark will appear, and so will several empty circles on the rest of the attachments; tap on each of the attachments you wish to delete to select them and this will put a blue check mark on those attachments as well.
Once all of the attachments you want to delete have been selected, tap on the blue trash can icon at the bottom right of the app.
In the pop-up menu that appears, tap on the red Delete … Attachments button to confirm deletion of your selected attachments from your conversation.
All those attachments will now be removed from the conversation, but your conversation itself will remain; double-check the conversation to verify.


Can I use AirportExpress model A1088 to connect to TimeCapsule for AirTunes only?

Simple and direct answer is yes if you plan to use the ethernet connection. Beware that you will need to download the old configuration utility here to change the settings on this model.


Running bash script without asking for password

You could use

sudo networksetup -setautoproxystate Wi-Fi off

and then configure sudoers(5) to allow that exact command (or any networksetup invocation (or any command whatsoever)) without a password, though this generally requires fiddling around with visudo(8) and if you get things wrong may lock you out of future use of sudo(1). Open a root shell, make a backup of /etc/sudoers, edit the file by running visudo, test it, and use root shell to restore the backup of the config if things go awry. Relevant sudoers(5) config lines would be along the lines of

# only with these args
yourloginnamehere ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/networksetup-setautoproxystate Wi-Fi off, /usr/sbin/networksetup-setautoproxystate Wi-Fi on

# any arguments to the command
yourloginnamehere ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/networksetup

# no password prompts at all from sudo ever
yourloginnamehere  ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

Also visudo may run a strange editor by default, so you might want to read up on the EDITOR and DISPLAY environment variables and related sudo questions and documentation before you get stuck in vi...


Switching between open pdfs in Preview without losing your place

AFAIK only with a work-around:

add a bookmark with cmdD in your currently visible PDF
choose another PDF read a bit and add a second bookmark there
switch to bookmark view with altcmd5
choose the bookmark of your first PDF in the sidebar
You may delete the bookmark using the context menu


Installing new PCIe m2 SSD on MacBook Pro 2014

start again:
format the new ssd when still outside the mac (you need an cable to usb). Forget all software that came on the disk: all has to go with the format.
Now use a clone app on the mac, like CarbonCopyCloner, to make a clone of your actual disk with everything on it to the still external disk.
When that is ready, shutdown the mac.
Restart while holding the Alt/Option key: the startup menu is displayed: choose the new external disk: when it starts correctly and all is well:
shutdown again, open the mac, take out the "old" disk and put in the new disk, be very careful with the connectors.
Close the mac correctly, startup normally and are ready to continue where you were.
EDIT: it may be that the ssd connection is soldered: then of course you can not do it what I explained.


No as Dropbox is running as one of your apps and so sees the unencrypted data.

What you can do is create an encrypted disk image in your dropbox area using Disk Utility (or TrueCrypt etc). Dropbox only sees the encrypted image but you have to mount the disk yourself.

there are other cloud services e.g. SpiderOak that say they store encrypted data and don't have the key to decrypt.


High Sierra not recognizing username when entering credentials

Assuming you have a system installed that is new enough to allow you to boot into Recovery mode (hold ⌘-R at startup, if not, use the disk as explained in the article), I think this may help you. Oops, forgot your question title. Look for Terminal in the Utilities menu after you get into Recovery mode. "resetpassword" still works, even in High Sierra.

Use OS X Recovery Disk Assistant to reset Your files and folder permissions


How can I run MAME on an iMac G4 (PowerPC)

You can get PPC version 0.103 at MacMAME

You'll need a ROM set of the same vintage, so search for "MAME 0.106 reference set" or similar.

You want either a specific PPC build or a Universal build. All builds labelled 32bit or 64bit are Intel only. sdlmame0140-universal would also work but compared to MacMAME it's more difficult to configure, which also applies to those in your 2nd link.

Finally, I would like to recommend you play SEGA's 1984 classic Flicky.

Have fun!


The scanner is in use by application '(null)'

I encountered the same question on my MacBook Pro.  I solved it by changing to another USB  port; I didn't have to restart.


Turn off Macbook automatic hibernation mode?

From a Terminal, use the following command to disable hibernation:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

If you later want to enable hibernation, use:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

If you want to free up the disk space used by hibernation, use the following command:

sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage

Note: This file is automatically recreated as needed if hibernation is reenabled and it doesn't already exist.


Is there a notification if someone is using Remote Management to observe my screen?

Yes & No.

If your looking for something like a Notification Center notification, then no. However there is a menu bar item you can add and settings attributed to it that are visual aides that you can see if someone is remotely managing your computer.

System Preferences > Sharing > Check 'Remote Management' > Computer Settings... > Click on Show Remote Management status in menu bar

Now the Remote Management icon will display in your menu bar. They icon image will alter based on it's current state (i.e., if someone is connected or sharing screen etc)

In terms of a Notification Center notification, as far as I know, it's not possible with the shipped OS. 3rd Party Apps might be available for your desired feature.


Can't download itunes album purchased on a different computer to Iphone

Apple tends to be overzealous in protection. The iPod generally only gets linked to one parent device... since yours is the laptop, not the work machine, you need to load via the laptop.


Macbook Pro buttons are pushed on their own

There is a very good chance that your battery must be replaced. Check it in Applications → Utilities → System Information → "Power": check the "battery condition": when it says "replace" or "service" replace it asap. Do not buy non-apple crap, they die faster than they are bought. In OWC there is a possibility that they have a replacement oem battery which is good. Only there.
Note: a bad battery swells (and can go leaking also) and presses the keyboard on the underside.


Can I revert to the Mountain Lion style labels instead of Mavericks tags? How?

I have the same problem, and so do others: just search the Apple support discussions. The only solutions currently are:

Reinstall OS X 10.8
Install PathFinder, a third party patch that brings back labels
If PF is too pricey, try asking binaryage (makers of TotalFinder) to also enable this feature, as TotalFinder is only $18, compared to Pathfinder at nearly $40.

There's also a few other semi-workarounds, like coloring folders using 3rd party tools (though this is tedious and only works for folders, not files)

And remember to tell Apple that you want labels back! If enough people speak out, they will change it.


How to turn off iPhone 5 without having to use the screen or buttons

Let the battery die, that will shut down the phone. Once dead and off, plugging the phone in to charge will turn it back on. This is assuming both the power and home buttons do not work.


iTunes: What is the usefulness of checked/unchecked songs?

It keeps holiday music out of my playlists, off my iPhone, until I want to overdose on them from December 24th through 25th every year.

For that alone: I love the check box.


Why are Mac files able to have multiple owners?

You are right, vanilla Unix doesn't support this. But there is this thing called ACL (Access Control Lists) which allows for a much more granular definition of access rights than the usual user/group/world rights. From Wikipedia:

  Most of the Unix and Unix-like operating systems (e.g. Linux, BSD, or Solaris) support POSIX.1e ACLs, based on an early POSIX draft that was abandoned. Many of them, for example AIX, FreeBSD, Mac OS X beginning with version 10.4 ("Tiger"), or Solaris with ZFS filesystem, support NFSv4 ACLs, which are part of the NFSv4 standard.

By default every file only has the user/group/world rights

pse@Fourecks:~/Downloads$ ls -le UML_Plakat_8_2012_Web-Download_V1.pdf
-rw-r--r--@ 1 pse  staff  4914537 Jun 21 09:56 UML_Plakat_8_2012_Web-Download_V1.pdf

If you now add an additional owner

Finder automatically creates a corresponding ACL entry for this:

pse@Fourecks:~/Downloads$ ls -le UML_Plakat_8_2012_Web-Download_V1.pdf
-rw-r--r--@ 1 pse  staff  4914537 Jun 21 09:56 UML_Plakat_8_2012_Web-Download_V1.pdf
 0: user:jonnyenglish allow read,readattr,readextattr,readsecurity

You can also modify ACL entries directly from Terminal by using chmod (which gives you significantly more details to manipulate than the Get Info dialog in Finder). For details it's probably best to run man chmod in Terminal and read the ACL MANIPULATION OPTIONS section.


Running (Perl's) CPAN in OS X: error "Can't open perl script –MCPAN"

Try this:

sudo cpan

cpan is an executable that comes installed in OS X (or installs with Xcode).


Change scrollbar speed (Mouse wheel acceleration)

I just downloaded USB Overdrive v3.1 this morning w/ El Capitan and it's working just fine. It was a fresh install of USB Overdrive as I did not have it on Yosemite. Maybe uninstall/reinstall?


Weird remotedesktop folder in usr/local - safe?

To determine the origin you have several tools at hand:

Code signing. Check the code signing of the app/pkg:

codesign -dv --verbose=4 /usr/local/remotedesktop/RemoteDesktopChangeClientSettings.pkg

This yields the following:

Executable=/usr/local/remotedesktop/RemoteDesktopChangeClientSettings.pkg/Contents/Info.plist
Identifier=com.apple.pkg.RemoteDesktopChangeClientSettings
Format=installer package bundle
CodeDirectory v=20100 size=176 flags=0x0(none) hashes=1+3 location=embedded
Hash type=sha1 size=20
CandidateCDHash sha1=888c8c6a6abd2f544020594e7d6f4dc31a7e01b8
Hash choices=sha1
CDHash=888c8c6a6abd2f544020594e7d6f4dc31a7e01b8
Signature size=4072
Authority=Software Signing
Authority=Apple Code Signing Certification Authority
Authority=Apple Root CA
Info.plist entries=24
TeamIdentifier=not set
Sealed Resources version=2 rules=12 files=21
Internal requirements count=1 size=96

Seems legit and (comparing it to other apps) from Apple itself. If the app/pkg was signed by another company at least one of the Authority lines would show a different vendor/developer.
Check the receipt bom files:

grep --include=\*.bom -rnw '/System/Library/Receipts/' -e "RemoteDesktopChangeClientSettings"

which will probably yield:

Binary file /System/Library/Receipts//com.apple.pkg.RemoteDesktopClient.bom matches

Check the corresponding plist file and you will get the installer package: RemoteDesktopClient 3.9.2. Seems also legit Apple.
Now you can lsbom ... the file. See man lsbom.

A second Receipts folder with non-Apple boms/plists is in the /Library folder!

There are probably some more methods to check if the file is legit or not which I'll try to add later.


Create a new Apple ID (e.g. here) and use the new one to log into the Chinese App Store.


Since discoveryutil was replaced by its predecessor mDNSResponder in 10.10.4 use sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder again (like in Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks) to flush the DNS cache.


What you're after is a virtual webcam software, such as ManyCam:

  Draw over your video window or screencast your desktop online with our software for your webcam


Is there any more technical information about the iPad/iPhone charge management feature?

It’s explained right below the option in settings by Apple: “To reduce battery agin, iPhone learns from your daily charging routine so it can wait to finish charging past 80% until you need to use it.”

It works best when you have a set schedule for yourself, as when you are unpredictable, it tends to just charge at 100% all the time.

Charging to 80% prolongs the life of lithium-ion batteries by nearly double as charging to 80% uses 50% of a life-cycle and charging the remains 20% (the slowest part of charging) uses the remaining 50% of the life-cycle.

Apple goes more into depth in their “Batteries: Why Lithium Ion” page


I'm not quite sure of what you are looking for but the following will list all directories named "Virtual Box" starting with the deepest nested to the least.

find /Volumes -type d ! -name Volumes -name "Virtual Box" 2>/dev/null

EDIT: OK, understanding your requirement a bit better we can use the path predicate to match outerfolder/innerfolder

find /Volumes -type d -path '*outerfolder/innerfolder'


Move Keynote presentation from Mac to iPad/iPhone

iCloud Drive

If your iOS devices are using iOS 11 or above, then the easiest option is to just save the Keynote presentations to your iCloud Drive. Your iOS device will be able to access them from the Files app and launch Keynote to view them. Likewise, you can launch Keynote first and then browse to your iCloud Drive to access them.

iTunes

Another option if your device is running iOS 10 or earlier, is to just use iTunes on your Mac to transfer your presentations. This option may also be quicker if you have large presentations or lots of them, as the transfer happens via USB cable rather than the internet.

To transfer via iTunes, follow these steps:

Launch iTunes on your Mac
Connect your iPhone/iPad to your Mac via USB cable
After a short while you'll see an icon appear that represents your iOS device - this should appear to the right of the drop-down menu (near top left of the iTunes window)
Click on the icon to view your device's summary screen
In the left-hand pane of your iTunes window you'll see various options for your device (e.g. Summary, Music, Movies, and so on)
Click on the File Sharing option (it should be the last one)
Now you'll see the File Sharing screen appear on the right-hand side of your iTunes window. This screen will list all the iOS apps that support file sharing.
Click on the Keynote app
On the right you'll now see a list of Keynote documents saved within this app on your device (assuming you already have some)
If you scroll down to the bottom you'll see an Add... button at bottom-right
Click on this button and use the window that appears to navigate to and select your Keynote presentations
Click on the Add... button
Now your Keynote presentations are transferred to the device
When finished, click on Done button

Now when you open Keynote on your iOS device and select the Browse option, you'll see the presentations listed there.

Note: This method is also available in iOS 11.


Yes, this file doesn't exist by default. The difference between bash_profile or .bashrc versus .profile is that the latter will be read by shells other than bash. For your purposes, you can simply name it .bashrc. Open up Terminal and enter the following command:

cd ~/; touch .bashrc; open -a TextEdit .bashrc

Now you have a created a profile, which the bash shell will read from everytime you log into it.

Next, simply enter the variable as plain text in the document:

export CLASSPATH=/path/to/folder

Or, if your have a current $CLASSPATH that needs to be added to, append the folder to it in your profile:

export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:/path/to/folder

Save the .bashrc file. Exit Terminal and open Terminal back up (or run . ~/.bashrc in Terminal without exit/reopen).

To test, enter:

echo $CLASSPATH


There are few ways to do this.

My Preferred way is::

Move all mails and folders you want to keep to "On My Mac" location.

Then in Mail app open Preferences--Accounts.

Uncheck the "Enable this Account"

It is now deactivated, but you still have the copies of the emails in your "On my Mac" location.

Sorry, the instructions are for 10.9.5.

As you will see the account is still there but grayed out, thus you can reactivate at any time.


Compatibility of iPad Air with Peripherals

Apps can't be stored on an external drive1. In fact, not much outside of media can be stored externally, especially without jailbreaking.

With jailbreaking, you can mount the external drive as a volume with iFile, which lets you store files on there. However, many apps crash when attempting to access files stored outside a sandbox by means of symlinking due to security restrictions.

Basically, it's nowhere as simple as external drives with OS X. You won't be able to do much with an external drive, and even less if you don't jailbreak.

The iPad Camera Connection kit with its SD card reader and USB port was not designed for storing files from the iPad — it was designed to import media from a camera. There are specially-designed drives for iOS devices, but they're for storing media, not apps or app data.

1 Well, jailbreaking lets you move the app and move it back, but it can't be run from the external drive, and moving it will probably break the permissions (and springboard).


Loading purchased music onto my iPhone 5S

Make sure the iPhone and iTunes are connected to the same iTunes store account and are both 'authorized'. Then you should be able to drag-and-drop in iTunes between your computer and iPhone.


Finding the mountpoint of an device in shell scripts

Use a here string to pass the output of diskutil to standard in.
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print :MountPoint" /dev/stdin <<< "$(diskutil info -plist disk1s1)"


How do delete pictures from the iPhone 4S camera roll but still keep them in my album?

Download your photos to your computer and put them in albums in iPhoto (or whatever photo software you use). Then sync those albums back to the phone using iTunes.

I don't think there's a no-PC solution to this yet.


Mac Mini with Lion wont start after Power failure...help!

Apple has guidelines explaining what to check for:
Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup (support.apple.com)


What's the purpose of iPhone USB port on the Internet Sharing panel?

This panel that you are viewing just shows all available network interfaces, whether they work or not. Theoretically it should work. However, I don't think it works Mac to iPhone but I have tested it reversed with Personal Hotspot and it seems to work. Albeit very slowly.

Hope this answers your question.
Cheers! :)

UPDATE:
The iPhone USB network interface is only for showing whether iPhone USB is connected or not. As a side-effect it shows up in the Network Sharing pane.
The Network Sharing pane just shows ALL interfaces whether they work or not (even if the interface is not meant to work with Network Sharing it will still show.)


Is Xcode 7.3 compatible with Homebrew on Sierra?

For starters, if you were editing the .bash_profile in your user folder it should not be able to cause system-wide issues, the most you would experience is a lack of ability to run software installed by Homebrew if you mistyped the line. To be safe though, I would remove this line from your bash profile if possible. Homebrew auto-links software it installs into the /usr/bin/ and /opt/local/ directories, so you don't have to add anything to the $PATH for ot to work properly.

As far as Xcode goes I am on Sierra and version 8 has worked fine for me, but version 7 was extremely glitchy when I was running El Capitan. Not to mention that version 8 is about half the size of version 7, so I would recommend uninstalling version 7 and replacing it with version 8.

With Homebrew in particular there is the issue that it requires both the Xcode app, and the Xcode command line tools (a quick search will reveal how to install them from the Terminal) so if you don't have both it could cause issues.

Finally do you have System Integrity Protection disabled? Some features of Xcode require root to run, and the Xcode app is allowed to make changes to the system, even if SIP is enabled. Homebrew on the other hand requires root permission to install properly but will be denied access to modify the core system if SIP is enabled, so its possible that Homebrew made some system modifications through Xcode, some modifications to the non-SIP-protected root folders, and was denied access to modify the SIP-protected root folders, resulting in a half modified, partially linked and generally unstable system. You can check if SIP is enabled (if you don't know) by running the command csrutil in the terminal. If it is enabled, and you have a recent time machine backup, I would recommend rebooting to your recovery partition, restoring your system with the backup, opening a terminal while in the recovery, running csrutil disable, and rebooting to macOS. From there install the Xcode command line tools if you don't have them, and try the process again with Xcode 8 instead. While this isn't for sure the issue, SIP can cause problems when used with software that modifies the system, and seeing as how you have enough IT know-how to be installing Xcode and a command line package manager in the first place I recommend disabling it to be safe as a rule.


Why doesn't defaults read` work for obtaining ShadowHashData key in user.plist?

The ‘read’ verb for defaults takes a domain, not a filename, therefore the .plist suffix should be omitted.

sudo defaults read /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/user ShadowHashData


Updating firmware to get OWC Aura Pro X2 SSD to show via Macbook Air

The OWC installation video has the following caution message.

High Sierra has a firmware update. To install this update, there needs to be an working internal drive compatible with the existing firmware. The original apple SSD was compatible. The new Aura Pro X2 480gb SSD will be compatible once the firmware update is installed.
I assume you have not ever had High Sierra or a newer version of macOS installed on your Mac. I assume this true, because you state the Disk Utility on the High Sierra installer does not recognize the new Aura Pro X2 480gb SSD when installed in your Mac.
Trying to install High Sierra to an external drive does not solve your problem. The firmware that updates itself requires an internal drive.


MacBook Misidentifies Physical Layout of Built-in Keyboard

You machine is mistaking the Keyboard Type.  See if this helps:

http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2009/12/fixing-keyboard-type-problems.html

If nothing else works, try this Karabiner fix:

Change Mac Keyboard Identifier after keyboard replacement


iCloud Photos process restarting continuously

I think I've resolved this by installing iPhoto (fortunately I had paid for it before when I wanted to use it before changing my mind), enabling Photo Stream in the iCloud Systems section (without iPhoto I couldn't do this), leave it for a minute then disable Photo Stream.  The iCloud Photos process disappeared from Activity Monitor and has stayed away.

It's odd that the preferences could get messed up if you don't want iCloud, but sometimes writing the in-correct settings followed by the correct one clears the bad setting.


Can I keep my iTunes library on an external drive?

Where is the iTunes library directory? What is its filesystem location?

Go to iTunes > Preferences.... Choose the Advanced tab. There you will find the path to your iTunes folder.

If I move my library from the laptop and to an external USB-connected drive, will my music and TV shows still play?

Yes, if iTunes knows where to find them. See following question.

I'd like to keep some of my music on the local drive so I can actually listen to it when I'm out and don't have the external drive with me. Is there a way to do that?

Under the Advanced tab in the preferences, make sure Keep iTunes Media folder organized is checked. Choose Change... next to iTunes Media folder location to choose a new location on your external drive. Then click OK.

Now go to File > Library > Organize Library, select Consolidate files and click OK. iTunes will now copy your files to your external hard drive. The files on your internal drive will be retained.

Go to your original iTunes Media folder on your internal drive and drag it to the Trash. Do not empty the trash before making sure that you can quit and relaunch iTunes and play songs without any trouble.

Now move any music files you want to be on your internal drive to a folder on your internal drive. When you move these files, iTunes will not be able to find them, as iTunes will look for them in the folder on your external drive. This will result in dead listings with exclamation marks if you try to play them. See this answer to remove dead listings: Verify that entries in iTunes are actually on disk.

Now go to iTunes > Preferences... and to the Advanced tab again. Uncheck Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library. Choose File > Add to library... and select the media files that you moved to your internal drive.

Cheers.

For the record, it is also possible to have more than one iTunes library and choose which one to load when starting iTunes. The above solution allows you to have one library with files at different locations.


Invalid code signature preventing kernel extension from loading on macOS Sierra

I think I've got this to to work. Further to Jason Conrad's answer above, ATTO seem to have rolled the SH 1068 driver into the SH 2068 package.

Now, why they don't make this clear to anyone without actually downloading the driver and attempting to install, I don't know.

What I do know is that after installing the driver for the SH 2068 (that is signed, so works on Sierra) I can now see my LTO tape library.

Grab the installers from here:
https://www.atto.com/downloads/165/


"Save as ..." in Microsoft Office always brings up "Documents" folder in Finder

Many apps do this. Years ago a utility was released called DefaultFolderX. It lets you fix this problem for all apps, and it can even store two different locations- one for opening files, one for saving files. It’s excellent for when you open files from one directory, work on them and save them into another directory.

It is unlikely that Microsoft will do anything about this function as they would regard it as the operating system’s responsibility.


Applescript to change desktop background positioning (e.g., Fill to screen

I pondered and researched this for some time, and with some help from this answer here, I have devised an AppleScriptObjc script that, on High Sierra at least (but should also work on Mojave), permits some customisation over the way the desktop background image is scaled to the (main) screen:

use framework "AppKit"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# PROPERTY DECLARATIONS:
property this : a reference to current application

property NSWorkspace : a reference to NSWorkspace of this
property NSScreen : a reference to NSScreen of this
property NSColor : a reference to NSColor of this
property NSDictionary : a reference to NSDictionary of this

property fit : 1 -- NSImageScaleAxesIndependently (will never clip)
property centre : 2 -- NSImageScaleNone (will never clip)
property best : 3 -- NSImageScaleProportionallyUpOrDown (no clipping)
property fill : 3.1 -- NSImageScaleProportionallyUpOrDown (clipping)

property black : {0, 0, 0}
property white : {100, 100, 100}
property grey50 : {50, 50, 50}
property red : {100, 0, 0}
property green : {0, 100, 0}
property blue : {0, 0, 100}
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# IMPLEMENTATION:
on run
    scaleDesktopImage to fill over blue
end run
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# HANDLERS:
to scaleDesktopImage to scalingOption over {r, g, b} : {50, 50, 50}
    local scalingOption -- fit, centre, fill
    local r, g, b -- 0 to 100

    set clipping to false
    if scalingOption is not in [fit, centre, best, fill] then return false
    if scalingOption = fill then set clipping to true

    set sharedWorkspace to NSWorkspace's sharedWorkspace()
    set mainScreen to NSScreen's mainScreen()

    set options to {NSWorkspaceDesktopImageScalingKey:scalingOption ¬
        , NSWorkspaceDesktopImageAllowClippingKey:clipping ¬
        , NSWorkspaceDesktopImageFillColorKey:RGB(r, g, b)}

    set imageURL to sharedWorkspace's desktopImageURLForScreen:mainScreen

    set [success, E] to sharedWorkspace's setDesktopImageURL:imageURL ¬
        forScreen:mainScreen options:options |error|:(reference)

    if E = missing value then return success
    E's localizedDescription() as text
end scaleDesktopImage

on RGB(r as real, g as real, b as real)
    NSColor's colorWithCalibratedRed:r / 100 ¬
        green:g / 100 ¬
        blue:b / 100 ¬
        alpha:1.0
end RGB
---------------------------------------------------------------------------❮END❯

If you're not familiar with AppleScriptObjC, then observe the script is split into three sections: PROPERTY DECLARATIONS, IMPLEMENTATION, and HANDLERS, the first and last of which I suggest you don't try to adjust too much or at all, unless as a learning exercise.

That said, I'm sure you won't go far wrong if you decide to add your own custom colour properties to the grouping in the PROPERTY DECLARATIONS sections, each of which is simply a 3-item list specifying the red, green and blue colour components with values between 0 (zero contribution) and 100 (full contribution).

The second section of the script, headed IMPLEMENTATION, is the functional bit containing the explicitly declared (for clarity only) run handler.  It's singular command is a call to the handler scaleDesktopImage, which is the line you'll be most wanting to play with to suit your needs.

It takes two forms, which I'll illustrate by example:

scaleDesktopImage to fill over blue

or:

scaleDesktopImage to fill

In other words, specifying the colour over which the desktop image is laid (i.e. the background colour), is optional.  If omitted, the background colour defaults to 50% grey.  Of course, you needn't use a pre-declared property to specify the background colour; you can supply directly a list of RGB values:

scaleDesktopImage to best over {100, 25, 50}

The remaining parameter is mandatory, and there are four possible named values:

fit: Stretches the image to fit the desktop's width and height;
centre: Centres the image without enlarging, however it will reduce the size of an image that would otherwise spill outside the boundary of the desktop;
best: Enlarges or reduces the size of the image to occupy the maximum possible area of the desktop without going outside the desktop boundary and preserving the aspect ratio of the image, i.e. a proportional size adjustment;
fill: Sizes the image to cover the full area of the desktop, preserving the aspect ratio, but extending beyond the boundary of the desktop along one of its axes if necessary in order to cover the background.


MacBook Pro "Core i5" 2.7 13" Early 2015 upgrade factory SSD with Intel 600p?

I've seen that both MCE and Transcend make drives to upgrade MacBook Pro/Air with PCIe SSDs. Here are links to the options, which are cheaper than OWC:

MCE - http://store.mcetech.com/mm/merchant.mvc?
Transcend - https://us.transcend-info.com/apple/jetdrive/


How can I lock Mail/Contact/Calendars in an iPad?

Without jailbreaking, I believe your options are the use of apps that provide this kind of lock functionality built-in, unless Apple decide to implement some kind of multiple user support in future iOS versions for devices like the iPad.

I've previously come across Secure Gmail or Secure Webmail (there may well be others) which provide passcode protection schemes when starting and, judging by the screenshots, appear to be frontends to the relevant webmail pages (as opposed to a native application like the Apple Mail app). I've not used either, but they may be of use to you.


How to parse output from a command in OS X Automator?

output=$(hdiutil verify "$f")
echo "$output"


If I upgrade to iOS 5, can I restore a 4.2 backup?

If I upgrade to iOS 5, will I lose the opportunity to restore from one
  of these old backups?

No. You can restore your settings, data, photos, videos, apps, and anything else iTunes has backed up from iOS 4 right over to the new iOS 5. Backups are compatible with future versions of iOS. You could likely restore an iOS 3 backup to a device running iOS 5. The only complication you would run across would be the apps and whether they retained support for your current iOS. Most developers periodically drop support for older devices as time goes on. For example, most new games in the App Store very rarely support the iPhone 3G or older iPod Touches. Moreover, they have also begun dropping support for older iOS versions, such as v3.0. If this conflict every surfaced, iTunes would simply not migrate over any apps that did not support your device (of course still moving over the rest of your data).

  Would I be able to restore the phone to the old operating system and
  then restore from an old backup?

Yes, and no. Let me explain the "yes." Apple digitally signs every release of iOS. This signature is verified by Apple prior to its installation. This is often referred to as a "signing window." During this window, any firmware can be installed on your phone, provided it has a valid signature and is being permitted by Apple (passes verification). Apple has historically left the window open for about a week and only for the previous version of iOS (e.g., if iOS 5.1 was released tomorrow, the window would cover iOS 5, if iOS 5.2 was released after that, the window would cover 5.1, and so on). More specifically, now that Apple has released iOS 5.0, iOS 4.3.5 (the previous version of iOS) is likely still being accepted, but that window is fast closing (and could likely have already been closed). Additionally, the rollback only applies to the direct previous build (in this case only iOS 4.3.5 and not 4.3.3 or 4.2.1), but it is time sensitive (iOS ups the ante by introducing tighter measures that may prevent the use of SHSH blobs, effectively sealing a downgrade to Apple's small window, but that's another topic altogether).

If you decide the day of release that the new firmware isn't for you, an immediate downgrade is 100% possible. As the days pass by, that number drops dramatically. If you miss that window, you will be unable to install the previous release without SHSH blobs, and software designed to jailbreak devices, which can allow a downgrade indefinitely. It's of note that SHSH blobs must be taken from a device running that particular build. You cannot extract SHSH blobs for iOS 4.3.3 from iOS 4.3.5.

So it's a mixed bag. Yes you can downgrade, but you must act fast. After that, it is a resounding "no." Unless of course you have met the requirements (SHSH blobs, etc.). However, as I said, iOS ups the stakes by seeking to block (or rather change the behaviour of) SHSH blobs, effectively limiting a downgrade to Apple's window.

This of course omits discussion of the baseband (the component that handles cellular data) which is another factor to consider should you requiring unlocking the handset to handle multiple carriers, however, this falls slightly outside the scope of your question, and for your intents and purposes, something you needn't worry about.


Scroll button on Logitech mouse won't left/right "click"

Apple offers basic mouse support out of the box for just about any USB or Bluetooth mouse. However, the center button's right/left clicks are not considered standard mouse functionality. Therefore in order to utilize these buttons, a driver or special piece of software is required. Unfortunately Logitech does not provide any special software compatible with both the Mac and the mouse model you have. This support thread on Logitech's site includes a comment from a Logitech employee confirming this.

I have seen reports that Better Touch Tool supports certain Logitech models, to fill in the gaps that Logitech left in designing this mouse. It's worth a download, as it's free.


Can you actually use Terminal to crash your computer?

One way to crash a computer is to execute a so called fork-bomb.

You can execute it on a unix-sytem by:

:(){ :|: & };:

It's a command that will recursively spawn processes till the OS is so busy it won't respond to any action anymore.


How do I open a OneDrive file in Preview using Applescript?

I figured it out. I didn't have a forward slash before Users:

tell application "Preview" to open POSIX file "/Users/myname/One Drive - MySchoolOrCompany/path/to/file"


I removed my external drive icon on my macos, how do i put it back?

You can reset these settings to their default values by deleting their keys.

defaults delete com.apple.finder ShowHardDrivesOnDesktop
defaults delete com.apple.finder ShowRemovableMediaOnDesktop
defaults delete com.apple.finder CreateDesktop
killall Finder

Note that the CreateDesktop key is for determining whether any icons are on screen, so if you are able to put other files on the Desktop then the problem is not with the CreateDesktop key's value.


The font you see in most places on Mac OS X is Lucida Grande, it is the system font in OS X 10.1 Puma to 10.9 Mavericks. Mac OS 1-7 used Chicago, then Mac OS 8 and 9 used Charcoal.

The most recent additions are Helvetica Neue (OS X 10.10 Yosemite) and San Francisco (OS X 10.11 El Capitan through Mojave)


Is it ok to view Time Machine backup directly and store files inside backup.backupd?

It's perfectly reasonable to manually navigate your Time Machine backup with Finder, even though you would usually use the Time Machine app instead of Finder. Whilst it's not something to rely on, Finder will prevent you from making changes to a Time Machine backup.

I'd avoid storing your own files in Backups.backupd — put your own files outside this folder, there's no need to put your own files within the backups directory.


MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010) shuts down unexpectedly

Here is a Terminal command to find out what is shutting down your computer.

syslog -k Sender kernel -k Message CSeq 'n Cause: -' | tail | awk '/:/{$4=""; print}' | pbcopy

It will save a text format copy to your desktop.


Go to the Apple ID page, then Reset your password.

If that doesn't work, you'll have to contact Apple Support for assistance.


Long text when Wrap text in cell is turned off does not merge with the next cell, it simply overlays on top of the adjacent cell if the adjacent cell is empty.  Numbers just hides the borders for readability.  If the adjacent cell has content, the text hides behind it.

There is no way, unfortunately, to expand the width of the cell to fit without expanding the width of the entire column.

Experiment with the text wrapping to get your desired result.

Hope this is useful!


Macbook Pro 13' Late 2011 didn't see Samsung 850 Evo SSD on boot

The problem was with Hard Drive Cable – it worked okay with SATA 2 devices, but can't recognize SATA 3 devices. On the similar MacBook Pro with stock cable everything worked fine.

After I replaced it (https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Late+2011+Hard+Drive+Cable+Replacement/7655), everything also started to work.


How can I remove pending downloads in iTunes?

Is there a Downloads item in the Store area of the column on the left side of iTunes? If so then you can click on it, click on the stalled download, and delete it.

Edited to add

There are a couple of places you might check after quitting iTunes. The first is

/Users/yourUserName/Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications/Downloads/

Make sure it's empty, and if not, remove what's in there (set it aside so you can put it back if it confuses iTunes later).

The other place is:

/Users/yourUserName/Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications/

and look for the file Dexter.ipa (or DexteGame.ipa or whatever the game is called). Delete this file -- it's the actual now-outdated game that iTunes is trying to update.

Otherwise iTunes has the need to download it stored in its database and doesn't care about files.

I take it that agreeing to the download doesn't help?


Any suggestions for a password manager app?

I use 1Password which is available for macOS (AppStore or directly from AgileBits), iOS, Windows and Android and offers both requirements you've listed (random passwords and Dropbox syncing).


Safari 'Download' Icons are stuck showing incomplete

Try right clicking on the toolbar, selecting Customise Toolbar and dragging it away, it should disappear in a poof of smoke.

Also are you sure you've actually quite and restarted Safari, often rebooting relaunches where you last left off... You have to actually quit the application from the Menu bar...


How do I export a Pages document on my iPad to PDF and save it in Files?

When I save a file as a PDF a panel opens as shown below. there you can save it to files. What version of iPadOS are you running?


Trouble accessing the OS X Lion web server from other device

If you put it in the

~/Sites

Folder then you have to navigate to

192.168.0.1/~USERNAME

Where you substitute your IP address and the username that belongs to the ~/Sites folder you copied your web app to.

To get it to just recognize the IP address without the username subfolder put it here:

/Library/Webserver/Documents

EG NOT the library folder in your home folder but the library folder in the root of the hard drive.


You can use the lsof command to get more insight into what process is using a specific port. In your case, you'd issue the command lsof -i4UDP:3052. Read the man page for more information about how to use the tool, as it is slightly different between current and older macOS versions.

One of the columns displayed by lsof, the PID column, will show the ID of the process that is using that port. You could find out more about the process using ps.


How to look up lost iTunes shared library password?

Your Home-sharing password is your Apple ID password. It should exist in your keychain:

Type Keychain Access in Spotlight. It should appear in the drop down menu. Open it.
Select your Login Keychain
Type in iTunes Store Password in the search bar of Keychain access.
Double click it and tick "Show Password"

If this appears:

Type in your user account password and click allow. You should then see your Apple ID password in plaintext.


Why do carriers sell the iPhone for so much cheaper than Apple?

In the US, carriers offer phones if you sign up for a 2-year contract at a heavily subsidized price.  The $649 is the price of the phone without that subsidy (retail price).  The subsidy also means these phones are carrier-locked, or bound to one carrier.  You can sometimes get the carrier to unlock these or hack it, but don't count on this.

Citizenship isn't so much a qualifier as having a US credit history and billing address. Presumably the carrier is on the hook to subsidize your hardware so they try hard to ensure you will honor your contract to maintain a stream of payments to them (or they can be fairly certain to collect the early termination fee). Having a US credit card (or cash) as well as having a Social Security or equivalent tracking number so the carriers can run a credit check against their US database of buyers increases your likelihood for being approved for a subsidized phone. If the carriers can't get a good credit check, you may be forced to pay the unlocked prices or buy on the grey market or a used handset.


Change the location of an icon in the menu bar?

If a menu icon is allowed to move, command + mouse select will work.

You might have to patch the program (or System Ui Server). Have you asked the developer if they can implement this as a feature?

Only the Apple icons are movable on my 10.6.7 systems so it certainly isn't easy for a developer to get this working and may be impossible in practice.

The only workaround would be to have a script that delays the radium start as the leftmost item is the last to load. If you had a launch script that slept for 3 minutes and then killed, relaunched that app - it would be leftmost until another started... If it was really important, you could kill and relaunch it periodically every X minutes to ensure that over time it's the leftmost icon without you taking manual action.


Airport Express requires frequent rebooting

In a WLAN used primarily with the same computers all the time, a DHCP lease timeout of 4 hours isn't necessary. You can easily set this to 4 weeks.


My MacBook gets stuck but still has 44 GB of storage left

You have  memory leak somewhere and it's causing your system to essentially supplement ram with hard drive.

Open activity monitor, go to the memory tab, and sort by usage. See if you can figure out what program or combination of programs is gobbling up all your memory.
Also that same tab will show you used memory, swap space, etc.


After syncing iPhone with iTunes, where will the app-related files be stored on my Mac?

I don't think the actually files are copied, but the backup directory for iDevices is ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup


How can I use Regular Expressions in Spotlight on Mountain Lion?

Apple's tools for accessing the Spotlight index (Spotlight itself and the mdfind command) don't offer any regex options, nor do I know of any 3rd party tools that offer that (I'm not actually sure Apple has APIs that would make that possible).

However, the mdfind command does offer a much more powerful interface than the GUI Spotlight search. It offers proper binary operators and finer grained control over what metadata you search. Check out The Power of mdfind (via archive.org) for some good information, as well as the mdfind man page.


This seems to be related to Apple's attempt to make it so that if you are moving from iOS to Android other iOS users can still message you as your iMessage will be disabled.

I managed to get a friend's phone to work by sending him an iMessage to his Apple ID. This seemed to fix it and now he can send/receive messages with others too.


Google Featured Photos on mac stopped working

UPDATE: Works in Mac OS Mojave!

This has been a known issue for months (since High Sierra beta came out). Hopefully the Google+ team is working on a fix, feel free to send them feedback directly to encourage them.


It may be possible for you to bypass the Setup Assistant by creating a file at /var/db/.AppleSetupDone. This can be done by: booting up into single user mode.

The following command will mount the boot drive as read/write device, create the .AppleSetupDone file, and restart your computer

mount -uw / && touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone && reboot

If your user account is actually intact, you will be able to login to the computer, and everything will be normal. However, in some of these situations, it's possible that your user account doesn't actually exist (unlikely based on the fact that you can't recreate it), or that your password hash is not a supported one (or is missing).

If you cannot login normally after disabling the Setup Assistant, you can re-enable it by removing the file that you created above. This can be accomplished by booting back into single user mode, and performing the following command:

mount -uw / && rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone && reboot

Once you've restarted, create a differently named user account (Admin?), and use that account to survey the scene. With the newly created user, make sure that you see an existing account for your previous user in System Preferences. If the user exists, it may help to reset the password for that user (to re-create the hash), and then attempt to login.


You can read through the thread on Apple Discussion Group for details. The most important that some routers doesn't like computer names which can't be part of valid DNS name (English letters, numbers, dashes, underscores).

To name my Mac I use something like Eir-Mac or EirMac and have no problems.


iPhone asking for icloud login after being restored after icloud has been removed

Standard procedure before you sell or give away your old iPhone/iPad etc
Don't set the phone up for the new user, they must do it themselves.
If you still have your iOS device
Before you sell or give away your device, you should remove your personal information.
You shouldn't manually delete your contacts, calendars, reminders, documents, photo streams, or any other iCloud data while you're signed in to your iCloud account. This would delete your content from the iCloud servers and any of your devices signed in to iCloud.

Back up your device.
Tap Settings > iCloud. Scroll down and tap Sign Out. In iOS 7 or earlier, tap Delete Account.
Tap Sign Out again, then tap Delete from My iPhone and enter your password.
Go back to Settings and tap General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings*. In iOS 7 or later with Find My iPhone turned on, you'll need your Apple ID and password.
If asked for your device passcode or Restrictions passcode, enter it. Then, tap Erase [device].
Contact your carrier for guidance on transferring service to a new owner. If you aren't using a SIM card with your device, you can contact them to get help transferring service to the new owner.

If you no longer have your iOS device
If the steps above weren't completed and you no longer have your device, follow these steps:

Ask the new owner to erase all content and settings as described above.
If you're using iCloud and Find My iPhone on the device, sign in to icloud.com/find, select the device, and click Erase. After the device has been erased, click Remove from Account.
If you're unable to follow either of the above steps, change your Apple ID password. This won't remove personal information that's stored on your old device, but it will prevent the new owner from deleting your information from iCloud.
If you're switching to a non-Apple phone, deregister iMessage.
If you're using Apple Pay, you can remove your credit or debit cards at iCloud.com: Choose Settings to see which devices are using Apple Pay, then click the device. Next to Apple Pay, click Remove.

Source : https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201351


iphone 4 update to ios 7 failed - cycles in and out of restart screen

If you have a recent backup (and thus aren't afraid of doing a fresh install and restore), there are a few things to try - all of them involve putting the phone in a mode that makes iTunes prompt you to do a complete restore/update/sync afresh.

Put the phone in Recovery Mode, and restore it.

If that doesn't help:

Try putting the phone in DFU mode and restoring it.
If you find the above instructions difficult to follow, especially with the timing between actions

just download redsn0w (look for the download links at the bottom of the blog post)
run redsn0w
go to the DFU option
it will guide you step-by-step to put the phone in DFU mode
once that's done, restore it from iTunes. Although redsn0w is primarily meant for jailbreaking, it is very useful for putting a phone in DFU mode.


I found Slate which might fit the bill. I've tried out the following ~/.slate and it does directional focus. Will check back after playing with it before selecting this answer.

# Focus Bindings
# NOTE: some of these may *not* work if you have not removed the expose/spaces/mission control bindings
bind right:cmd    focus right
bind left:cmd     focus left
bind up:cmd       focus up
bind down:cmd     focus down
bind up:cmd;alt   focus behind
bind down:cmd;alt focus behind


Using an External HDD as a bootable Windows Disk

The partition has to be formatted NTFS. Special set ups like this are better done manually, not with bootcamp.

Format the partition NTFS, then startup with your windoze disk and try to install it to the USB drive.


Setting up a special secondary display on iMac

The operating system supports multi screens. For the iMac i would say that a DisplayLink adapter would allow you to connect additional screens via USB. I've never used it, so I have no idea what the maximum resolution is, but I read several times on different boards that this solution has been successfully used.

Update: As gabesubdo mentioned in a comment below, it is not necessary to use a DisplayLink if your iMac has one or more Thunderbolt ports, which can be used as Mini Displayports as well. Apple provides adapters for Mini Displayports (to HDMI, VGA, ...)


Why doesn't HandOff work when connected to VPN and is there a way to go around it?

I contacted ExpressVPN support and got some answers.

They have a security feature that prevents port forwarding between different devices connected independently to the VPN
A solution would be to connect both devices (mac and iPhone) to the router and connect the router directly to the VPN, in this way both devices share the same connection and can "see" each other


How does Application Level Firewall work?

ALF uses a process called Firewall. The rules list you are looking for exists under: /usr/libexec/ApplicationFirewall/com.apple.alf.plist

Additionally, any changes made on a per user basis, is made to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf.plist.

If you navigate to /usr/libexec/ApplicationFirewall/, you will also see the Firewall and socketfilterfw processes, which supply the backend and configuration manager (respectively) for ALF.

You can read more about Apple's in-house firewall here: http://krypted.com/tag/socketfilterfw/


How to remove shared devices from my iMac?

Firstly, shared devices that appear in the Sidebar are:

other devices you have at home that are connected to the same network as your Mac.
other computers signed into your iCloud account.

And a network doesn't mean you have to have multiple computers or that you're somewhere other than home.

For example, most times users come across an unknown shared device in their Sidebar it's because it belongs to a printer that is also connected to the same Wi-Fi network as their Mac is. That is, if you have a single Mac at home connected to Wi-Fi, then that Mac is connected to a network.

Without knowing your setup at home I can't comment on what the shared device is, but it could be any device that's connected to the same Wi-Fi network (assuming you're using Wi-Fi), or any device connected to the same internet connection at home. So it could be a printer, a smart TV, a weather station, etc.

So, if you're concerned that there's some sort of dodgy device trying to connect to your Mac, that's almost certainly not the case.

If your main concern is that you just don't want to see Shared items, then you can hid these as follows:

Open Finder
Go to Finder > Preferences...
Select the Sidebar icon in the toolbar
Modify your settings under the Shared section
Exit Preferences

Removing 'shared' section in Finder programmatically


Mounting SMB network share from Mavericks recovery mode

This is, because the binary for the framework that’s required is not part of the Recovery System.

I have been trying various things for over an hour now and the only thing that works appears to be AFP:

mkdir /Volumes/VOLUMENAME
mount_afp afp://USERNAME:PASSWORD@000.00.000.00/VOLUMENAME /Volumes/VOLUMENAME

One important thing that kept this from working for me was that I had used /Volumes/VOLUMENAME instead of the correct /VOLUMENAME in the afp URL.


Safari extensions have suddenly stopped working (10.13.4)

The permissions issue ended up being the problem that prevented me from using extensions.

For some reason, it keeps the weird time machine permissions (you can't edit a time machine backup etc.) when I copy over the Safari folder through Finder. It shouldn't do this and never has for me before this.

But I solved it by instead copying it over through the terminal, using cp, which doesn't preserve any metadata unless I specify that it should do that. After doing that, I had to reinstall the extensions (and thus lost some extension data) but at least they work now.

EDIT: I was able to recover the lost data, from a backup of ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.Extensions.plist


Is there a vimari or vimium port for safari on mojave?

vimari currently has a somewhat experimental process to compile and install it locally for Safari 12, detailed here:

https://github.com/guyht/vimari/blob/master/docs/safari_12.md

  Note: We are currently working on improving this installation flow, as well as the extension itself. Because vimari now has to be released
  as a Safari  App Extension instead of a Safari Extension it
  requires some fundamental changes to the code. We can't guarantee that
  all the features work in  this version. It's a learning process for us
  so bare with us.

  Clone this repo

  $ git clone git@github.com:guyht/vimari.git

  Open the Swift project located at app_extension/vimari in Xcode
  Configure the Signing settings for both the vimari and extension targets    to use your information rather than the Vimari
  team's (see this SO
  answer
  for more information).
  If you want different settings than the default ones, make your changes in    settings.js. You can always come back later to change
  the settings again.
  Build and run the project (⌘ + r)
  An empty GUI box will show up - ignore it (we'll fix it later). Go to    Safari and open up settings (⌘ + ,). Go to Extensions and
  you should    see vimari in the list of extensions. Enable it.
  You may now press stop in Xcode and close Xcode. The extension will be    available even if you restart Safari.

  This was tested on High Sierra with Safari Technology Preview (version
  12). Let  us know if something is not working for you.


Can I move the Google Drive folder to a different volume?

I figured it out.

Quit Google Drive and remove the Google Drive folder.
Restart Google Drive.
Error message saying that it can't find the folder will pop up.
Click the error message text to open a dialog in which one can specify a new folder.
Specify your new folder location.


"File Sharing" without Shared Folders still shares folders

It turns out because I was logged into the same iCloud account on both machines it gave me access to both volumes automatically.

Which is the same functionality as if you log in with Admin access.

Mac folder which is Not Shared is shared and fully accessible from a Windows machine


I'd use a bash script for this as everything that you list can be opened in bash.  Use the open command pointing to the application to run the application or a folder location to open a particular folder with finder.


Find out which app icon is missing in xcode for an app

The error is telling you which icons are missing. Go to images.xcassets and click on AppIcon. You'll see the 76pt 2x (76 * 2 = 152) and 83.5 2x (83.5 * 2 - 167).


You will need to click each app icon to get to the full description, then scroll down to where it shows the size.


You can install a custom keyboard like Dvorak Extended, an example of which is found at

http://fwvdijk.org/

Or create substitutions for the needed characters in system preferences/keyboard/text


https (ssl secured) local websites are not working in Safari and Chrome in Mac Yosemite. How can I fix this?

It's likely that the issue is with certificates for your server.  You probably don't have a SSL certificate for localhost:8443 (as it's unlikely that any CA is going to issue one for that hostname), so of course you're going to get certificate errors.  Either click through the certificate errors; or choose a valid domain that you control, get a certificate for it, and host your site on that domain.

If you have a certificate for your domain (example.com) and you have a SSL certificate for that domain (e.g., for www.example.com), another thing you could try is setting up DNS (or your /etc/hosts file) so that www.example.com resolves localhost (127.0.0.1).  This still might run into other issues, and really, it's better to just test it on the domain you have a certificate for or click through the certificate errors.

None of this is likely to be Mac OS X specific.


Can I move my logic board between different models of MacBook Air?

Yes, it will work.

The only thing you need to understand is that logic board is a determinative component in a MacBook and all the other parts (like flash drive, Wi-Fi module, etc.) just connected to it. But all of them are completely changeable.

So if you got two MacBook Air 11" 2011 you can interchange their parts in any order you want.

Just don't forget to use credible disassemble guide. I strongly recommend you ifixit.com.


It would appear to be an intentional change in how the phones perform as the battery ages, to prevent early shutdown in exchange for slower performance.

From Geekbench - iPhone Performance and Battery Age

  Performance and Battery Age So what’s going on here?

  First, it appears the problem is widespread, and will only get worse
  as phones (and their batteries) continue to age.

  Second, the problem is due, in part, to a change in iOS. The
  difference between 10.2.0 and 10.2.1 is too abrupt to be just a
  function of battery condition. I believe (as do others) that Apple
  introduced a change to limit performance when battery condition
  decreases past a certain point. Why did Apple do this? kadupse on
  Reddit offers the following explanation:

  "Many iPhone 6s devices were shutting down unexpectedly, even after
  the battery replacement program (Which many people weren’t entitled to
  use). Because degraded batteries last much less and end up with a
  lower voltage Apple’s solution was to scale down CPU performance, it
  doesn’t solve anything and is a bad experience… but it’s better than
  having your device shutdown at 40% when you need it the most."

  Apple acknowledged the sudden shutdown issue that affected the iPhone
  6 and iPhone 6s earlier this year. However, does the same issue affect
  the iPhone 7? Apple appears to have added a similar change to iOS
  11.2.0 for the iPhone 7.

  If the performance drop is due to the “sudden shutdown” fix, users
  will experience reduced performance without notification. Users expect
  either full performance, or reduced performance with a notification
  that their phone is in low-power mode. This fix creates a third,
  unexpected state. While this state is created to mask a deficiency in
  battery power, users may believe that the slow down is due to CPU
  performance, instead of battery performance, which is triggering an
  Apple introduced CPU slow-down. This fix will also cause users to
  think, “my phone is slow so I should replace it” not, “my phone is
  slow so I should replace its battery”. This will likely feed into the
  “planned obsolecense” narritive.


This usually happens when someone imports one library to another Can you describe the exact steps you took to restore the Library. What app did you use to back it up? Remember that dropping a Library onto the iPhoto icon will cause it to import too.


Find IP address of ethernet printer when Location is “Home”

A sure fire way to find the IP address of your printer (any device for that matter) is to ping the broadcast address.

Get your broadcast address:

ifconfig en0 | grep broadcast | awk '{ print $6 }'

Use en0 for wired ethernet and en1 if you are on wireless.  You will get output similar to the following:

 192.168.1.255

Ping the broadcast address

ping 192.168.1.255

Let it run for about 30 seconds or so....Then hit CtrlC  to stop it.

Alternatively, you can specify the time by adding it to the ping command:

ping -t 30 192.168.1.255

Type arp -a and look for your printer.  You will get output similar to what's shown below (IPs have been changed for security).

router.home (192.168.1.1) at 0:1b:21:c4:c5:55 on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
? (192.168.1.4) at 0:4:b:b4:6b:d8 on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
unifi.home (192.168.1.18) at 80:2a:a8:40:f0:21 on en0 ifscope  [ethernet]
cp2025dn.home (192.168.1.25) at 78:e3:b5:f6:5f:13 on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
lex.home (192.168.1.55) at 0:21:b7:10:38:3b on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
allans-mbp.home (192.168.1.13) at 0:26:b0:e8:bb:a6 on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
brwc48e8f209375.home (192.168.1.110) at c4:8e:8f:20:93:75 on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
ipad-5.home (192.168.1.115) at b0:34:95:21:68:5b on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
allans-iphone.home (192.168.1.126) at (incomplete) on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
allans-imac.home (192.168.1.123) at a8:20:66:39:2c:1c on en0 ifscope permanent [ethernet]
diskstation.home (192.168.1.221) at 0:11:32:15:da:4c on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
plex.home (192.168.1.235) at (incomplete) on en0 ifscope [ethernet]

In my case, I have two  printers on my network - my HP CP2025dn and a Lexmark E260 with DNS/IPs as cp2025dn.home/192.168.1.25 and lex.home/192.168.1.55 respectively.

As for the "Location" field, this is something that is set up by the user or Sys Admin.  In my case, it's getting the information directly from the printer.  See printer Setting page below for my Lexmark printer.  What you saw in the YouTube video is misleading because the IP address had to be manually populated in this field.


MacbookPro 2018 13inch switches off frequently due to panic issue

This is technically called a 'kernel panic'.
If you want to try a few easy things, follow the instructions on this apple support page regarding this error:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT200553
Basically install any OS updates available, install software updates for other apps and drivers, reboot in safe mode, reset NVRAM, disconnect all the external devices.
Also you could try a hardware diagnostic by rebooting while you hold down the COMMAND key and the D key at the same time.
However, if you're near an Apple store, I highly recommend making a genius bar appointment to have them take a look at it. They will do a brief look for free, and give you a recommendation for what to do next.  Here is the link to do that:
https://getsupport.apple.com/

Click Mac
Click Mac Notebooks
TYPE IN "restart" into the text bar
click "Unexpected shutdown or restart" Click Bring In For Repair
Sign in with your Apple ID
Follow the instructions.


Can't install command line tools on MacOS Big Sur

I fixed the same issue for me by downloading and installing the latest CLT package from https://developer.apple.com/download/more/


How does the Mac choose which connection to use when both Wifi and Ethernet are connected?

From the Apple Support database article regarding network connection priority:

  If you connect to the Internet or a network in several different ways
  (using Wi-Fi or Ethernet, for example), you can change the order of
  the network port configurations your computer tries when connecting to
  the Internet or network.

  If there are multiple active network port configurations when you try
  to connect, OS X tries the one at the top of the list first, and then
  tries the other port configurations in descending order.

In that support article it is also described how you can change the priority order of network connections in System Preferences.


Launching Finder in macOS 10.15, Catalina, with a shortcut

In the end this was simple as View -> Show Toolbar. Finder cannot show sidebar if toolbar is not enabled. Maybe catalina upgrade changed this, or I have accidentally pressed shortcut to hide toolbar.


This happens because the game is not widescreen enabled (but 4:3). This usually happens with ports of old games, from the times, when 4:3 (or close to 4:3) resolutions were common (like 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024). Look for resolution settings in the game and change it to something closer to 16:10 and the black bars will be smaller.


Macbook trackbar gives me electric shocks

I just got my MacBook Pro 2 months ago. When I charge my Macbook, the top surface next to the mouse pad feels like it is vibrating and the edges give me a sudden shock.

This is what I did next: I attached a wire that is connected to the Earth terminal in the electrical wall socket and the other end to the Macbook Pro corner and viola, the vibration and shock disappeared.

The electric adaptor that converts AC 220V to 20/9 V DC into the USB Type C connector does not appear to be connected to the Earth terminal as you see below.


What process is in charge of the background image on Mac OS?

The Dock process is responsible for Launchpad, Mission Control, the Dock and the Desktop Background.


Apple Music streaming subscription - add own CDs?

I found an answer. If I add the albums on y Mac running Catalena to the Music library, they will be synced to the other devices for streaming.


How can I change the language for automatic spelling correction?

To add to what gentmatt said, in the case you need to keep "Automatic by Language" because you happen to write in different languages, click on "Set Up…" in the list shown for the Spelling option.

On the dialog box that appears, you can change the order for the languages. In my case, this is the order I chose.

Now, I can write organize, and the word is not corrected, nor do I get a suggestion for writing organise. (It happens that organise is shown as incorrect.)


If you have entered time machine via the top toolbar, you will receive the "Waiting" message (as shown in the image) when trying to navigate to an older backup. This is simply because time machine is waiting to load that backup.

Be patient and wait for it to load

If it is taking a very long time to load, visit This Link for troubleshooting


How to update macOS when the system thinks the update is already installed

Spent a fruitless hour on the phone with Apple support—nothing I tried had any effect. Finally solved it by downloading the High Sierra installer on another, newer Mac, and using its Terminal's createinstallmedia command to make a bootable USB thumb drive installer. Transferred this to the target iMac via sneakernet, and was able to run it and install High Sierra.


cpu is 100% used, yet no application shows significant usage

Thanks to some helpful answers I managed to find the answers to this question.

The main cause of this CPU usage is Norton AntiVirus.
A Setting in the AntiVirus called 'Norton Deepsight Community Submission' makes it constantly use around 50% CPU, just to collect data and send this to Norton I guess.

The other 50% is also caused by Norton AntiVirus, yet I am not a 100% sure which setting or process causes this.

Hopefully this helps other people in the future.

Many thanks to the commenters on my main post, which helped me find the cause of this problem.


From my brief research the media keys are passed as events.

As an alternative solution, perhaps you can use a solution similar to the one illustrated here:

Define the keypress you want to perform an action (Using Keyboard Shortcuts in System Preferences or a third-party application like USB Overdrive)
Write an AppleScript to perform the action you need:

tell application "iTunes"
    next track
end tell


Close an application window directly from Mission Control?

You can use do this by using Better Touch Tool as suggested by Anthonin C's comment. However, if you have a trackpad or touchpad, you may find that using a gesture instead of a keyboard shortcut avoids the problems outlined in the question linked to by Anthonin C. If this is something that interests you, then you would:

Install BTT
Add a new global gesture
Set up a Touchpad Gesture (such as a 3 finger click)
Set the Predefined Action as Close window below cursor

This will then work from Mission control.
Closing apps
By the way, if you're wanting to close an App rather than just a window, you can also do this via the heads-up display. More specifically:

Press commandtab to open the heads-up display
Keep holding the command key once when you see the heads-up display
Cycle through the apps by pressing the tab key or the ~ key
Once the app you want to quit is selected, press the Q key to quit the app

NOTE: - You could also use the heads up display to quickly navigate to an App and, once there, use the command+W keyboard shortcut to close the window. However, if you have multiple windows open you could inadvertently close the wrong window.

UPDATE re Better Touch Tool
The developer of this app has set up a new site for its distribution.
Legacy versions of his apps (released before February 2018) can still be used for free.


You might be able to remove Apple's Color Emoji font, but you cannot remove it with FontBook. Instead, go to /System/Library/Fonts/ and drag "Apple Color Emoji.ttf" to the Trash. You must authenticate yourself as an administrator to do this. I haven't tested this, and I don't know if your computer will catch fire.


2011 macbook pro not responding to startup commands

Since the shift key or option key should be recognized by the system well before the Apple logo arrives, you can conclude that you have a failed keyboard.

Plugging in any USB keyboard and booting in safe mode (shift) or single user mode (command s) should let you know if the keyboard has issues.

Now the Apple and blue screen are good. They mean that the core OS and hardware are fine and that the start process is hung starting your user. My guess is you need to boot to internet recovery (or an external drive) and then repair some damage to the user files or the drive itself. Then you can delete the .AppleSetupDone file and make a new admin account to see if the Mac can work.


How can I visit an IP address on Mobile Safari?

include http://

i.e.: http://192.168.11.18

(Tested this and it works perfectly)


I searched for AirPrint and because I have a Netgear router I used Netgear genie. Work wonderful. Can't save the page but I printed it.


Is it possible to make Keynote more accurate with autoplaying?

My understanding is that this is due to the fact that the slide transition takes a certain amount of time - the 15 seconds is the total time the slide is undistrubed on the screen and it allows a certain amount of time for the changover - the way to check this is to set the timing to '0' and see what happens :)


Safe way to get "rm dir -rf" working (place options after dir name like on linux)

You can install the GNU version of rm with brew install coreutils. It will install into /usr/local/bin/grm to avoid conflicts with the standard version. But you can easily overcome this by aliasing it to rm for interactive shells.


What features are lost on the Lightning to 30 pin dock adapter?

The iPod out functionality is actually a very specific feature that was added only very recently. Only a few cars actually support it, so the vast vast majority of appliances should continue to work fine.

  Here's the thing, though: "iPod Out" doesn't actually mean "audio output from an iPod." It's the branding for a very specific feature for cars and remote-screen tools that was included in iOS 4, which delivered a customized iOS graphic display via the in-dash screens when the device was docked

http://www.tuaw.com/2012/09/13/lightning-30-pin-adapter-works-with-analog-audio-ipod-out-doe/

For the Video functionality, this will be coming soon - the connector is capable of it, but it most likely requires additional circuitry in the adapter to implement it.

  As with the 30-pin connector, the Lightning connector supports video output; Apple told Macworld that Lightning-to-HDMI and Lightning-to-VGA cables will be available “in the coming months.”

http://www.macworld.com/article/1168555/what_apples_new_lightning_connector_means_for_you.html


Batch Removal of "Where from" Metadata Without a Handler

You need to add:

& space

To:

set end of filePaths to quoted form of POSIX path of thisFile

Example:

set end of filePaths to quoted form of POSIX path of thisFile & space

Another way to resolve this issue is to coerce the list filePaths to a string before it's used in the do shell script command, as after all it does get coerced in the process.

So, just before the do shell script "xattr ... command, do the following, instead of using & space as previously mentioned:

set text item delimiters to space
set filePaths to filePaths as string
set text item delimiters to ""


Assuming that the wall socket is providing power (or the switch for the socket is on) it is normal, or rather common, for power adapters of devices to be a bit warm when connected to the wall socket (mains) without a device connected to the other end (iPad, iPhone, laptop, etc.). In many cases, the charger would be considerably warmer while actively charging a device than when it's not.

Here's additional information broken down into bullet points:

The amount of heat produced primarily depends on the size of the adapter, its charging capacity and its build quality (there are other secondary factors as well).
Heat is a product of resistance in electrical and electronic circuits, and is observed in every electrical/electronic equipment to varying degrees.
All power adapters have a "transformer" that first converts the high mains AC (alternating current) voltage, which would be 230V or 110V, to a much lower voltage, which is then converted to DC (direct current) and fed to the device.
An ideal transformer and power supply would not produce heat when nothing is consuming power on the other end. But practically, all transformers (and power supplies) have losses of different kinds (although this has improved over time), and this not only results in heat, but also results in minuscule amounts of power being used even when no device is connected to the adapter.
If you find the adapter being too hot to touch, then it's malfunctioning or failing. If it's only a bit warm, there's nothing to worry about except for an increase in your electricity bills (however small).
As for fire hazard, it's always better to turn off the mains switch (or unplug if there's no switch to control it) on all electrical equipment when not in use and also keep them away from flammable items (or items that may catch fire after prolonged exposure to heat).
If the charger overheats during usage, Apple's genuine chargers have built-in protection to turn them off.

For more information, see:

Wikipedia article - Real transformer - deviations from ideal
iPad charger teardown (Ken Shirriff's blog)


How can I close the mail function in terminal?

To read the mail you have, use the mail command. man mail will give you instructions.

To delete all mail without reading it, run

sudo rm /var/mail/$USER/*


After updating iPad to iOS 8, WiFi no longer works

First I'd recommend you to reset your network settings:

Tap Settings → General → Reset → Reset Network Settings

If that doesn't show the new network within 90 seconds of leaving the device scanning for the network, next you might power down the iOS device once after the settings have been reset.

Enough users have the same problem as you see in the official Apple forum as well as here, so it looks like Apple has changed how things work with iOS 8. a.k.a “where there’s smoke there’s fire”

So only "real" solution may be to wait for Apple to fix this with an update.


Messages in the Cloud with multiple Apple IDs

Don't turn on iCloud Messages for either device.

You can continue to use iCloud Backup and include your Messages, if you want them backed-up. If not, leave that off, too.

As previously mentioned, sharing Apple ID's nowadays will start causing more problems as Apple and developers start using individual iCloud accounts for more individual use.

Perhaps looking into other photo sharing options to get what you need, until Apple does something, is the better short-term approach.


Weird Google Chrome errors in system.log

As you may know Google Chrome runs as a multi-process application. You have your initial "Google Chrome" process that manages the UI and plays "host" to a number of other processes. A new "renderer" process is created for each tab you open in Chrome, a "plugin" process for each extension you install, and there is a separate "GPU" process for the code that talks to the system's GPU. Each of these other processes appears in Activity Monitor as a "Google Chrome Helper" process.

To make Chrome more secure, the renderer processes run in a sandbox. They are only able to talk to the network through the host process and can only talk to specific files (for example, fonts and ColorSync profiles). They are also prevented from talking to other processes in the system, which is what causes these log messages. The renderer processes are trying to talk to the launchserviced and windowservice processes, but being prevented from doing that because of their sandbox.

This bug was resolved by a software engineer on Google's Chrome Security team with a commit in February 2014. Removing this one line of code resolved the problem.

[NSApplication sharedApplication];

Amongst other things, calling the sharedApplication method opens a connection between an application and OS X's WindowServer, which you can see failing in the CGSLookupServerRootPort error.

The intention was for Chrome to call this method to "warm up" certain resources before enabling the sandbox; gaining access to certain files, processes or network resources before the sandbox restrictions fell in place. However it seems that at some point this attempt started failing, resulting in these errors in the log. My guess is that Apple considered this "warming up" an attempt to cheat the sandbox and started clamping down on it.

If I'm reading correctly this change reached the stable release channel with an update of Google Chrome to 34.0.1847.131 in April 2014.

Interestingly the Chrome team had been discussing removing these calls to the sharedApplication method back in October 2013 and even discussed removing Cocoa entirely from the renderer processes as a goal back in 2009.

On a related note, Apple released a security fix in April 2014 to resolve a bug where "WindowServer sessions could be created by sandboxed applications."


Keyboard shortcut for "replace" on the dialog box

When All controls is enabled, a border is wrapped around the focused button. Press Select to select the focused button. Enter always select the default button in the dialog which may not be the one with focus.


Apple Automator (or similar): performing workflow triggered by shutdown?

Triggering events on shut down is unlikely to be reliable. macOS is not designed to interrupt or pause the shut down process.
If a user is logged in, graphical applications can inadvertently cancel or delay shut down. This behaviour typically occurs when a modal dialog is shown for an unsaved document. In this situation, the preferred solution is to auto-save the work and restore it on next launch; this is considered better than interrupting shut down.
Better to sync periodically or in reaction to changes to a set of files.


Install windows 7 on 15 inch macbook pro with a 13 inch MBP install disk

When you run the Boot Camp Assistant app it should offer to download the newest drivers for your MacBook Pro. You can just save them to a USB key and run the installer after you finish installing Windows.


My mac bookpro screen hangs and freeze after restarting it displays black screen

The 3 beep sounds indicate problem with your EFI.

EFI is located on your disk in a hidden partition and is mainly responsible for booting and other key functions.

It is possible you do have a disk error (even if the "authorized dealer") did not find anything. I would suggest you use the Disk Utility and check your disk again and while at it repair the permissions.

Check your version.

How to repair EFI: Find your EXACT model here.

http://support.apple.com/downloads/#macnotebooks


how to change the carrier name in my iphone 6 without Jailbreak?

If you want only to change the displayed name of your carrier, I'm afraid you can't do that without a jailbreak.


If you run airport without arguments it just prints a description of its options and examples of how to use some of them, including airport en1 sniff 1 to start sniffing. It does not report the current state of the interface.

To actually start sniffing you need to call the command as shown (and replace en1 with your actual WiFi interface):

$ sudo airport en1 sniff
Capturing 802.11 frames on en1.
^CSession saved to /tmp/airportSniffHZ3nqn.cap.
$ ll /tmp/airportSniffHZ3nqn.cap
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  24 Nov 26 10:10 /tmp/airportSniffHZ3nqn.cap

It will keep running (and capturing) until you press Ctrl-C. To analyze the captured data you can use tcpdump or Wireshark.


The tags shown when saving or modifying a file are Finder tags, not specific to Preview, etc.

Go to Finder → Preferences, then choose the Tags tab.

Click on a tag, then choose – to remove it.

Tag colours can be changed by right-clicking on a tag in the list and choosing a new colour for it.

  Drag your favourite tags to the area below to make them available for quick use in Finder menus.


How to override DNS resolver ordering while connected to L2TP VPN

My case was very similar. This worked:

Ordered VPN connection first in Service Order dialog -- which removes local DNS server, as you noted;

Created additional resolver for local lan:
% sudo mkdir /etc/resolver
% echo "nameserver 172.16.10.1" | sudo tee -a /etc/resolver/home.rossipedia.com

After that, both local and remote hosts became accessible via FQDN, such as host.first.vpn.domain and other.home.rossipedia.com.


The problem lies in one little word: Modified sine wave. Which typically has a rather tenuous connection with an actual sine wave. Rather, its voltage is a periodic step function with rather few steps (though I can't say for sure about the specific model you mention). You need an inverter that provides the latter. They exist, but tend to be more expensive. I use one made by Mascot, and it charges my macbooks just fine. My previous inverter, with its modified sine wave, did not.


What is the fastest device to use to restore a timemachine date based backup on a mid 2015 mbp?

The fastest port on this machine seems to be the Thunderbolt 2 interface at 20Gbps. Are there any drives that would get anywhere near that?

Chances are very unlikely.  Why?  Several reasons:

Thunderbolt 2 has been deprecated in favor of Thunderbolt 3 since late 2015.  The market for these devices were small to begin with and is shrinking more quickly with each passing day.
You didn't say specifically what you're restoring from but suffice to say the commonly accepted media is an external hard drive. Assuming it is a SATA III drive, the throughput will be at most 6Gb/s
Even if you were to connect two Macs with a Thunderbolt 2/3 port and get a full 20Gb/s , you're still limited by the speed of the drive on which you did the backup
There are no USB 3.1 (or what is now known as 3.2 Gen 2) adapters or devices in the market; they were never manufactured.  Why?  USB 3.1 was introduced alongside Thunderbolt 3.  The most you'll get is USB 3.0 (or 3.2 Gen 1); 5Gb/s throughput.

The fastest devices in order would be the following:

Thunderbolt to SATA enclosure like the Lacie Thunderbolt Drive or G-Drive.  The Thunderbolt 1/2 versions of these drives are discontinued so you'll have to find them on eBay or similar sites.
USB 3.0 to SATA adapter or similar enclosure.  This will give you the 5Gb/s throughput; closest to the 6Gb/s SATA III throughput.

  Is a 3.1 USB thumb drive good enough or would a standard SATA3 SSD drive work faster?

Get it for the "future proofing" and get it for the fact it's solid state and less components to fail, but as for throughput, you'll never see it.


On HFS+, something is wrong for a less than TB sized Apple SSD to take 30 minutes to run a check. On APFS, it's slightly more complicated. Depending on how many snapshots you have, this might be normal but you'll need to get some details to know.

If you're on APFS - you'll need to look at the logs or enter to the command line to determine how many snapshots of the volumes exist. If your fsck is taking 2 minutes to run, but you have 30 snapshots - there goes an hour on a full fsck and no "problem" other than perception. On the other hand, an hour to check one snapshot and you're back in "this is taking longer than usual by dozens of times".

I would get all the files backed up before you try to run the repair since a slow check almost always happens when storage is failing (but doesn't always correlate and certainly doesn't cause the failure itself).

At this point once you're backed up, you can take the fast path or the slower one:

Fast path - download the OS installer you want (High Sierra or whatever) and wipe the drive. When you are booted from an external USB, repair the drive twice to see if the second pass is faster than the first.

If you have issues with a wiped / empty drive - you can seek hardware service knowing that your data is backed up.

The slower path is to still boot from another drive and just repair the drive. You might get a good read of the speedup or if your data and drive really take 30 minutes to check all the system structures.

Booting to single user mode also might help in the short term and run /sbin/fsck -fy twice from the black screen to see if trimming the free blocks can help the storage allocate storage more efficiently.

On my MacBook that's been running High Sierra for quite some time, the single mode filesystem check reports 19 snapshots and that matches up with Time Machine:

tmutil listlocalsnapshots / | wc -l

The above list of local snapshots belonging to Time Machine counts 18 lines of output. None of the snapshots are more than an hour old as my Mac runs normally on power, with the external time machine destination connected so the snapshots cover the last day or so. I have seen it grow to 35 snapshots when I'm traveling and not doing hourly backups to the main time machine destination drive. They clean themselves up as far as I've observed in all cases.


How to untangle Multiple iOS devices sharing one Apple ID for iMessage

Multiple people in one household can use the same Apple ID in iMessage.  That is how my wife and I have it setup.

On my devices, I have my phone number and email checked for iMessage.

On her devices, she has her phone number and email checked for iMessage.

On the Mac, it is under Messages, Preferences.

On iOS, it is Settings, Messages, Send & Receive.

Which messages are delivered to each device is dependant on which phone numbers and emails you have checked in the preferences listed above.


Best resources on data recovery from corrupted OS X HFS+ partitions

The best free solution I've found is TestDisk. I have no personal experience with it, but I've heard rave reviews.

You can also try Data Rescue 3, a paid solution. I've used an older version in the past with good results. Problem with this sort of solution is that they can only recognize certain formats of files. But there is an extensive list of files that it can recover.

Of course, the best tip I can give you for data recovery is keep regular backups -- especially for laptop computers!


Zsh moves texts when the prompt is too long

On Catalina 10.15.3 zsh is version zsh 5.7.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin19.0).

Compiling version 5.7.1 from upstream source shows the same error while version 5.8 does not.  As you can see below when setting PROMPT='%~X the X is deleted on pressing tab on dir in 5.7.1 but not 5.8.

The NEWS file supplied with 5.8 source says changes were made to completion functions which may explain this but in any case this bug appears to be fixed.

Several changes have been made to the way completion functions track
'precommands' (such as `command` and `env`) and determine whether the
command being completed for is a shell builtin. Developers of completion
functions may wish to familiarise themselves with `_normal -p` and
`_pick_variant -b`.

There is also this CVE included in version 5.8 so perhaps Apple will provide an update at some point if you don't wish to compile your own.

CVE-2019-20044: When unsetting the PRIVILEGED option, the shell sets its
effective user and group IDs to match their respective real IDs. On some
platforms (including Linux and macOS, but not FreeBSD), when the RUID and
EUID were both non-zero, it was possible to regain the shell's former
privileges


Keyboard shortcut to scroll window up and down?

You can try ⇞ page up and ⇟ page down, which usual pages one whole page back and forth. I don't think there is a system wide shortcut to scroll by line.


Mac OS Catalina 10.15.2 AMPDevicesAgent using 100% CPU

I still had this nagging problem on Big Sur, so it does not appear to be fixed (thoroughly). The iPhone entry in my Finder was permanently stuck at about one third and AMPDevicesAgent permanently took more than 99% of one CPU. Although the system remained responsive I noticed the fan blowing and more activity than I expected in the monitor.
I ended up force quitting AMPDevicesAgent in the activity monitor which removed the iPhone entry from my finder and the activity returned to normal. However I wanted my iPhone to be backed up so I also restarted the finder. This ended up in similarly high CPU usage as before, but AMPDevicesAgent never reached the levels it used to have. After a fairly long period of time (about 20 minutes) and several iPhone unlocks when it appeared to be stuck the process eventually settled down and finished the backup.
Now my iPhone is backed up and it appears in the finder with the usual information. AMPDevicesAgent is back at 0.1% where it is supposed to be. So all appears to be normal again and I keep my fingers crossed. I only found little info on the subject in the "usual places" like StackOverflow an Apple community forums.


How to recover iPhone SE when stuck in recovery mode without data loss?

In iTunes hold down shift. A window should come up asking you to select your file. Try selecting it from there.


Windows support software could not be saved to selected drive, Error Installing Win 10 on MBP2017. I Already did SVC, MVRAM reset

Again after I give other shot by doing this : http://gizmostorm.com/fix-the-windows-support-software-could-not-be-saved-to-the-selected-drive-boot-camp/ said : Can't Install the software because it is not currently available from the Software Update server". But It works, after I give it another shot. I hope it'll help for anybody who have same issue as me. Thanks.


How to use AppleScript in a bash script to create an alias for an app?

osascript will run AppleScript code in your shell. This example uses a HEREDOC to present the code to osascript.

/usr/bin/osascript <<'EOF'
tell application "Finder"
    set myapp to POSIX file "/Applications/Chess.app" as alias
    make new alias to myapp at Desktop
    set name of result to "Chess.app"
end tell
EOF

Source- Link


Does Apple keep track of iOS app opening?

I just tested this using Apple’s built-in “Music” app on an iPhone 4 running iOS 5.1, using ngrep and tcpdump to monitor network activity. No connections to Apple servers are being made when opening an app on any iOS device.

As you mentioned, individual apps (e.g. Facebook) may keep track of data like this by pinging a server every time you open their app — but Apple does not do anything like this globally.


How can I tell how long Photos in Big Sur will be syncing?

There is no progress bar since it isn't sure how long it will take. A progress bar will appear at times, depending on what it's doing, it hasn't been completely removed.
Unfortunately there is likely nothing you can do but wait.