Well - if Disk Utility tells you you need to back up your files and erase the drive, that would be my first step at fixing the problem.

It's not possible to tell if you have a hardware or software problem, but once you have backed everything up (or gotten help doing that), then

Apple usually provides phone support for free within 90 days of purchase, so you might call AppleCare or visit an Apple Store for free service should one be close.

Most people can follow the two articles below to reinstall the OS:

http://www.apple.com/osx/recovery/
PH11273 - OS X Mountain Lion: Erase and reinstall OS X

Feel free to ask another question if you have a problem within these steps. You could still have a hardware error underlying the issues, but until you try a software fix, it's hard to know that your filesystem isn't just in a bad state where OS X declines to try to fix it.

Your keyboard will be fine for the reinstall, and you don't need bootable media since Internet Recovery will know that Mac shipped with Mountain Lion and offer to re-download the installer when you need it.


I think you may need to investigate your firewall settings on your router, or ask your ISP if they know of any particular ports that may be blocked & how to change that.

The list of ports & services required for all software Apple access is fairly substantial, but is all detailed at Apple's Knowledge Base: TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software products


What is `applewebdata` and how do I avoid it?

The support folks at Workflow replied in an email

  Those applewebdata:// URLs are likely local references to the image files that have been downloaded with Get Contents of URL that are now stored in the currently-running workflow. With Get Contents of Web Page, the input page converts the HTML to Rich Text and maintains the web links to each of the images.

The "solution" is to use the Get Contents of Web Page action, then.


Is it safe to use my US iPhone/iPad charger with a simple European plug adapter?

Yes, you can use the simple adapter.  If you read the tiny fine print on the plug end you see "110-240V 50-60Hz" which means it will work on most common electrical systems around the world without a transformer.


Apple Music: How to view the list of all loved items?

I’m guessing these answers didn’t solve your problem. They didn’t solve mine. Insead I went and got my data from Apple:

Head to Apple’s Data and Privacy portal.
Log in with the Apple ID for which you’d like to download data.
Under Get a copy of your data, click Request a copy of your data.
Select Apple media services information, then press Continue.
Now click Complete the request.
Wait a frickin’ week!
Download the file they email you a link to.
Inside the zip you will find another zip called apple_media_services.zip.
Inside that zip you will find Apple Music Likes and Dislikes.csv.

Super irritating that you have to go through such process to find this.


Apple uses code signing to lock all their apps to the latest OS version. If you were to jailbreak your phone it might be possible to replace the Music app from a previous version but it would likely cause instability.

A more reliable solution would be to roll back your phone to OS 12. But you’d be trading off the new features from OS 13.


A way to change NIC's MAC-address except with CLI ifconfig's "ether" option?

You won't be able to permanently change the MAC address of the card, as it is hard coded on the card itself.  However, as you have guessed, you could create a script and run it at boot in order to change it every time the computer boots.

This post details the steps it takes create the script and how to have it run when you want it to.  If you follow that, you should be good to go.


How do I fix a bad file name encoding on an Intel Mac?

I know this is a very old question, but do verify that your download of File Name Encoding Repair Utility is version 1.1 from May 26, 2006. It is linked (and is listed as v1.0) at https://support.apple.com/kb/DL355?locale=en_US.

Apparently, this software was updated to be Intel compatible in 2006 with no fanfare.

I downloaded this utility in 2017, ran on MacOS Sierra 10.12.2 on a MacBook Pro, and ran it against a few folders with garbled Japanese text from Mac OS 9. It corrected the file names as expected.

I was then able to shift the text encoding of the files to Japanese using SUE in Mac OS 9. There's some differences with Shift-JIS in Mac OS X that I was unable to translate 100% of file encodings using just TextWrangler. Perhaps running SUE in SheepShaver or another Mac OS 9-era emulator may assist.

Using the File Name Encoding Repair, SUE, and Google Translate, I was able to get some old software working. This should help if anyone else finds this in the future.


excel files look different on OSX Desktop w/Parallels

The double red lines/logo of Parallels appears when the default "Open with..." application is an application that requires Parallels in order to be opened.

Thus, in your case, it would seem that the default "Open with..." application for .alias files is probably Excel for Windows which requires Parallels in order to be opened, while your default "Open with..." application for .xlsx files is some program that works locally on Mac (maybe Excel for Mac or OpenOffice for Mac..).


Many reasons

You cannot create another file system
No firmware exists for this
It would void your warranty
Android device developers spend a lot of time developing their hardware and software to work together, just like iOS.
The amount of effort required (boot ROM firmware  modifications, bricked devices, etc) makes it much easier just to buy an Android if you really want one.


Is it normal to have duplicate JVMs or JDKs in a MacBook?

That is normal but they are not exact duplicates. To test I just installed the
developer package that you mentioned. This added the two Java SE6 non system lines.

So I think the four packages you see are split by 32 or 64 bit and whether they are the JDK or the JRE needed to just run java and installed when you are asked to run a Java program or web plugin.

As to the 'wierd' errors best to show those and the code in a question on Stack Overflow.


How to speed up my iMac (Mid 2007) running Lion

If you don't want to spent money, then that rules out hardware upgrades, which means you are down to software.  You are already running the latest OS (and anecdotally at least for anything reasonably up to date the received wisdom is that you gain a speed boost with new OS releases from Apple on the same hardware) which means you are down to configuration.

So, as you say you have never performed a rebuild and you have potentially 9 years of cruft kicking around gathering dust I would simply test out your backup strategy by ensuring you have copies of everything you need, and perform a fresh install, recovering back only that which you are sure you need and still use.


rMBP - El Capitan - External monitor blurry

There's a Ruby script here:

https://gist.github.com/bastibense/6549835

#!/usr/bin/ruby
# Create display override file to force Mac OS X to use RGB mode for Display
# see http://embdev.net/topic/284710
#
# Update 2013-06-24: added -w0 option to prevent truncated lines

require 'base64'

data=`ioreg -l -w0 -d0 -r -c AppleDisplay`

edid_hex=data.match(/IODisplayEDID.*?<([a-z0-9]+)>/i)[1]
vendorid=data.match(/DisplayVendorID.*?([0-9]+)/i)[1].to_i
productid=data.match(/DisplayProductID.*?([0-9]+)/i)[1].to_i

puts "found display: vendorid #{vendorid}, productid #{productid}, EDID:\n#{edid_hex}"

bytes=edid_hex.scan(/../).map{|x|Integer("0x#{x}")}.flatten

puts "Setting color support to RGB 4:4:4 only"
bytes[24] &= ~(0b11000)

puts "Number of extension blocks: #{bytes[126]}"
puts "removing extension block"
bytes = bytes[0..127]
bytes[126] = 0

bytes[127] = (0x100-(bytes[0..126].reduce(:+) % 256)) % 256
puts
puts "Recalculated checksum: 0x%x" % bytes[127]
puts "new EDID:\n#{bytes.map{|b|"%02X"%b}.join}"

Dir.mkdir("DisplayVendorID-%x" % vendorid) rescue nil
f = File.open("DisplayVendorID-%x/DisplayProductID-%x" % [vendorid, productid], 'w')
f.write '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">'
f.write "
<dict>
  <key>DisplayProductName</key>
  <string>Display with forced RGB mode (EDID override)</string>
  <key>IODisplayEDID</key>
  <data>#{Base64.encode64(bytes.pack('C*'))}</data>
  <key>DisplayVendorID</key>
  <integer>#{vendorid}</integer>
  <key>DisplayProductID</key>
  <integer>#{productid}</integer>
</dict>
</plist>"
f.close

You'll have to run it in El Capitan's rootless mode for it to work.


How to sell comic books through Apple in-app purchase?

Apple thoroughly documents the requirements for participating in their stores at the developer website:

https://developer.apple.com/resources/

You should review the iBooks and In-App Purchase from the above page.

At that point, you should be ready to read and digest the actual App Store Resources themselves to figure out what sort of effort you'll need to expend to sell your content through Apple.

https://developer.apple.com/appstore/index.html

Assuming you are on iOS - you can skip the parts on the Mac App Store. The review guidelines have some of the information you'll need.


MacBook Pro stuck on GRUB minimal Bash at startup

Use Startup Manager

When you use Startup Manager to select a startup disk, your Mac starts up from that disk once, then returns to using the disk selected in Startup Disk preferences.

Press and hold the option key immediately after turning on or restarting your Mac.
Release the Option key when you see the Startup Manager window.

  If your Mac is protected by a firmware password, you can release the key when you're asked to enter the password.

Select your startup disk, then click the arrow under its icon, or press Return.

  If you press and hold the control key during this step, your selection is saved in Startup Disk preferences, so it persists until you change it.

If your Mac is using OS X Lion 10.7.3 or later, you can also use this method to start up from your Time Machine backup disk. Startup Manager identifies your Time Machine backup as ”EFI Boot.”

References
The above answer was copied from "How to select a different startup disk", https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202796, January 29, 2019.


High Sierra contacts disappear immediately after creation

Solved

Someone in the Apple community gave solved my problem,
 many thanks (https://discussions.apple.com/message/32765319):

Might be a corrupt .plist.

Do a backup, preferably 2 backups on 2 separate drives.

Quit the application.

Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J.  When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder.  Select Library. Then go to Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.plist.  Move the .plist to your desktop.

Restart the computer, open the application, and test. If it works okay, delete the plist from the desktop.

If the application is the same, return the .plist to where you got it from, overwriting the newer one.


Just change date to January 2012 or something, it will install just fine. The certificate expired in March.

Updated, steps:

turn off automatic synchronization of date & time
change actual date of the system to 01.01.2012 (for example, prior to
26.03.2012)
install the Xcode
turn the automatic synchronization back on.


How do I stop my iPhone from muting itself when plugged into a Toyota RAV4?

Your phone isn't muting itself, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do - trying to play music through the USB port. That's because the USB port on the RAV4 (along with many vehicles in recent years) is designed to be used for both audio playback and charging.

I can't comment on the RAV4 specifically, but in most vehicles the input source will change as soon as you plug the phone into the USB port. So, preventing this behaviour involves only changing the car's input source back to whatever it was prior to connecting the USB cable.

If that's not happening in your case (some car audio systems don't seem to let go of the input, even though the source has changed), perhaps you can change the audio source on the iPhone. To do this, tap on the down arrow on the right of the Dock Connector label to see what other options you can pick (if any). Plugging in some headphones (assuming you're not using an iPhone 7) will provide that as an option to select.

Otherwise, the assumption is that playing audio through the iPhone's built-in speakers is not required when it's plugged into a dock/external speaker (which is what the builtin USB port is on the RAV4). Your only option to play audio through the builtin speaker is to plug the iPhone into a secondary USB charger (e.g. using the accessory socket of your vehicle).

Your next best option is to just plug in some headphones (although if you have an iPhone 7 you may need a special adapter so you can both charge and use the headphones simultaneously), or connect to Bluetooth headphones.

[Edit]

I was reminded via the comments that you can actually buy cables that are charging only cables. My brother-in-law accidentally bought one of those cables and he could never use it for anything other than charging. So, presumably, such a cable could solve your problem.

In my brother-in-law's case, he purchased his cable from a servo (i.e. a gas station). I mention this only because I'm not sure if that's where you're more likely to come across them.


Keyboard shortcut for "Show Package Contents"

I suggest that you create a custom Finder shortcut in System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts → App Shortcuts → +.

This way you can open packages with ⌥ as a modifier key.

⌘+O to open folders
⌥+⌘+O to open packages


Why has moving emails from my inbox in Mail.app become so slow?

Under the View menu, check Hide Deleted Messages. That way, messages marked for deletion are no longer shown, and will be processed the next sync (like they used too).

It is possible you activated it unintentionally (it's just a ⌘+L away on the keyboard).


How to rename (main) hard disk back to default? And is the disk default really LVG?

The naming scheme for non-CoreStorage devices/volumes looks like this:

(hard-coded) name of the disk device

EFI (invisible in non-tweaked Disk Utility)
Volume 1 (usually Macintosh HD)
Volume 2 (optional)
... (optional further volumes)
Recovery HD (invisible)

And the naming scheme for CoreStorage devices/volumes looks like this (a Fusion-disk has an additional invisible EFI partition, an invisible Boot OS X volume and a second invisible Physical Volume):

name of the Logical Volume Group

EFI (invisible)
name of Logical Volume 1 (usually Macintosh HD)
name of Logical Volume 2 (optional)
... (optional further volumes)
name of the Physical Volume (invisible)
Recovery HD (invisible)

The names of the Logical Volume Group and the Logical Volumes usually derive from former volume names or is just "Untitled" for Physical Volume(s) but the hard-coded physical device name is rarely used (I have seen it only once, probably the owner renamed it).

Renaming the Logical Volume Group:

To rename the Logical Volume Group use:

diskutil cs rename lvgUUID|lvgName newName

To get the lvgUUID just enter diskutil cs list. It's the first UUID listed. Alternatively you may use the Logical Volume Name. I don't know whether this works if you have several equally named LVGs or PVs. Therefore I always prefer the UUID.

To get the previous visible disk device name open "About your Mac" -> System Report -> Hardware -> SATA/SATA Express and search for your device.

Reverting CoreStorage to non-CoreStorage:

To revert the CoreStorage non-destructively to a traditional non-CoreStorage volume boot to Recovery Mode/Internet Recovery Mode or an OS X thumb drive.

Open Termínal.app and enter:

diskutil cs list

to get the Logical Volume UUID (usually it's the last listed) and enter:

diskutil cs revert lvUUID

to convert your CoreStorage device to non-CoreStorage.

Though the command converts CS to non-CS non-destructively it's always a good advice to have a current backup of your main volume.

You mustn't do this with Fusion drives or you will destroy all your data.


Is it possible to use AirDrop and Sidecar with a mac on a VPN?

(This solved my similar issue with Airdrop, not tested Sidecar yet.)
I do not have VPN at router but on individual devices, so VPN broke my iCloud copy/paste and airdrop. It may be because they were not "sharing" the same wifi network anymore, as in, they had two different data tunnels, and the only solution I found was to deploy VPN at router or to turn off VPN.
I dig Mullvad VPN Mac app preferences, and found that there is an option to enable "Local network sharing" that allows local network access to connected devices. I turned it on and voila, I had my airdrop back. I believe that major VPN providers' Mac app has this function, and if you toggle this function, you can get your problem solved.
ps.: I strictly use Wireguard protocol, not OpenVPN. Not sure if it has anything to do with it, just saying...


Does the iAd App Network shutdown mean my app will no longer display ads?

Yes, you need to move to a different provider.  With iAds shutting down, and assuming you don't have any other third-party provider, such as AdMob, serving you ads, your app will not display any ads after the shutdown on June 30.

The iAd shutdown was announced almost a year ago, giving developers ample time to find other providers and other ways to serve ads.


How to backUp an iPhone with a black/blank screen?

I think your best bet is to to run your iphone side by side with another iphone that is also set to lock.  Now, by using the two phones side by side, you should be able to enter your passcode 'blind' using the position of the keys on the working phone as a guide.


Display as an Extended Desktop across 4 x Dell Monitors

The answer depends on whether you have the M1 MacBook Pro or the Intel version.
M1 Macs
M1 Macs officially only support 2 monitors, for the Laptops this means one external and the internal screen. This is the same for all M1 macs, i.e. the 13" MBA, 13" MBP (M1 version), MacMini and iMac 24".
However, there is a workaround called DisplayLink. It does work, however, it needs special software and hardware, which means it may break at some point due to lack of support (this is very unlikely in the near future though, it seems like it gains more and more features right now, since there are still some limitations like rotating a screen).
Intel Macs
Depending on what exact model (13", 15", 16") you can usually connect at least two external monitors, the more powerful 16" version can even handle 4 monitors. You mention you have a 13" MBP, which means you can only connect up to 2 external monitors.
Connecting more thant the officially supported amount of monitors is again possible with DisplayLink or with an eGPU.

Remember, every pixel your MBP has to render puts more strain to it and will lead to higher CPU/GPU usage. Of course, maybe you need 4 monitors, but it seems like the "small" 13" MBP can't handle that. I have a 2017 15" MBP with a dedicated GPU and if I charge it and connect a 4K monitor it quickly starts ramping up the fans (depending on the workload), which might not be ideal, too.


Keyboard shortcut to focus application's search bar (not Spotlight) in macOS?

I don't believe there is a system-wide shortcut for this, as the definition of Search Bar may not be standard across apps. But hitting ⌘+F focuses the Search Bar in many Mac applications.


How to insert page number starting from custom index in Pages 5.6.1

This pages help document has the answer for this question. Please refer https://help.apple.com/pages/mac/5.6/index.html?localePath=en.lproj#/tan7248753e


How can I speed up a very slow Font Book

First of all don't go into that directory and start deleting fonts. Assuming SIP will even let you, those are the fonts that ship with the Mac. Unless... have you installed some fonts there yourself?

Fonts should be stored in /Users/[USERNAME]/Library/Fonts.

And you can safely remove any and all fonts from that directory, just leave the directory itself.

If you have been installing fonts in the /System folder you probably want to go in there and move the ones you installed there to your /Users fonts folder. In case you were wondering here is a list of fonts that macOS ships with.

Should you somehow mess things up, Font Book.app has a function in the File menu called "Restore Standard Fonts..." which can be used if you think you may have messed up and deleted fonts you should not have deleted.


Is there a way to re-purpose an iMac as a second monitor while using components?

Unfortunately the 21.5" late 2009 iMac model cannot be used as a display via Target Display Mode, although the 27" model could.

It's not clear what state your old iMac is in (working order or not), but if it boots then you can use it for a number of purposes (e.g. as a file and/or print server, for sharing a VPN connection, for sharing an iTunes library, etc).

If you really wanted to take advantage of its screen, you may have some limited success with a software solution. For example, people use Air Display to use existing iMacs as monitors for other devices/computers. However, this and other software solutions can be a little hit and miss.

Another option is to use your old iMac in Target Disk Mode. This is effectively a way of turning your iMac into an external hard drive. For more information on this you can read Use target disk mode to share files between two Mac computers.

Finally, if your old iMac is not in working order, you can sell some of its parts online (e.g. via eBay). If this is your scenario, you may want to consider keeping the hard drive and using it in an external case as an external hard drive for your new iMac. Whether this is worth doing will depend on its size etc.


Problems running Britannica 2013 in OS X 10.8

Personally I don't trust Oracle JDK at all. I use JDK from Apple. Can you try it?


Yes! You can do one of the following:

right-click on the tab you want to keep and select the Close Other Tabs option, or
make sure you’re on the tab you want and then use the optioncommandW keyboard shortcut (or, if you prefer using the mouse, hold down the option key and navigate to File > Close Other Tabs).

NOTE: - This closes all other tabs in the same window, not all tabs in all windows.

BONUS: You’ll find the above shortcuts are supported by most of the default macOS apps in macOS Mojave, including Finder, Terminal, etc. Some older macOS apps also support these, as do some 3rd party apps.


I went through the exact same process back when I was playing around with logKext. The unix command you may want to explore is /usr/bin/expect.

It can get complex quickly, but basically what it does is act as a mediator between you and the programs you're running so it can provide answers that you would normally have to type. As an example, I built this script so I could automate the process of printing the logKext output. You should recognize all of the commands you'd normally type to logkextClient yourself...

#!/usr/bin/expect -f
spawn logkextClient
expect "logKext Password:"
send "mylogkextpassword\r"
expect "logKextClient > "
send "print\r"
expect "logKextClient > "
send "quit\r"
close

Back in 10.5 and 10.6 this worked well for me for outputting the logKext print so I could pipe it into an email and send it. However, I was running this logged in as root to terminal, so it was simple.

Theoretically, if you weren't logged in as root, you could instead say

#!/usr/bin/expect -f
spawn sudo -k logkextClient
expect "Password:"
send “myrootpassword\r”
expect "logKext Password:"
send "mylogkextpassword\r"
expect "logKextClient > "
send "print\r"
expect "logKextClient > "
send "quit\r"
close

(note that I used sudo -k intentionally to be consistent and require a password every time)

So you could use your favorite command line editor to create this script, do a chmod +x to it and drag it to the dock for launching... Theoretically.

But I have been having problems in Mavericks getting /usr/bin/expect to behave properly with sudo, so this isn't working for me in other scripts like it should. And I don't have logKext installed at all anymore for testing anyway.

But I think this is the direction you may want to head.

Good luck!


Following Mavericks upgrade, Microsoft Word closes silently right after opening

I have several Machines which run MS Office 2011 perfectly fine with Mavericks. I would suspect some corrupt settings or cache is the reason for your problem. Try the following:

try moving the Folder "~/Documents/Microsoft-User Data" somewhere else (f.e. the Desktop) and try starting Word
try moving the folder "~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office" somewhere else (f.e. the Desktop) and try starting Word

In both cases the Folder will be recreated with default settings, so if Word starts without problem again you know the source of your problems. If not you can delete the newly created folders and replace them with your previous one.

Please try that and post some feedback.

Update by asker: removing the above folders didn't help ... but removing ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.microsoft.Word.savedState did.


What kind of Microphone? Any pre-amplified microphone should be plenty loud (even too loud) when maxed. You may have to use a pre-amp of some sort, something like the ART PowerMIX III before plugging it into your computer.


Timing for Mac tracks down your activity in the background without using timers: https://timingapp.com


There is no point in trying the vague 'catch all' solutions like wiping NVRAM and system controllers. The problem you are having is a SIGSEGV, or, a segmentation fault in WindowServer. It is likely due to corrupt identifiers. Those identifiers are stored in multiple places, and if enough get corrupt, you get crashes. While some identifiers are stored in the NVRAM (or PRAM), wiping this usually only postpones the next crash since the identifier eventually ends up in there again.

If WindowServer crashes, all GUI applications stop and it restarts via launchd. When WindowServer starts, it first gives you the login window. So in fact, you are not getting logged out, but your whole graphical session simply crashes.

Having a peek at your crash report, it seems this thread is crashing:

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

The last few calls were to color space functions (or methods), leading me to believe you might simply be dealing with a corrupt ICC profile.

The cash is within com.apple.CoreGraphics, and the most recent calls are to:

color_space_get_md5_digest + 57
color_space_get_identifier + 9
CGXColorSpaceRegistryCopyRegisteredColorSpace + 42
_CGXCopyColorSpace + 27
_XCopyColorSpace + 57

Now, if I'm right, it's trying to calculate the MD5 hash of a color space. It's doing that because it wants to find the identifier for a color space, and it needs that identifier because CGXColorSpaceRegistryCopyRegisteredColorSpace needs the color space data for the preset color profile for your monitor. Now, to be 100% this is the source of your crashes, I would need as many of your crash reports as possible, because if they all crash because of different reasons, it has nothing to do with the software on your system but it's more likely to be a hardware issue where bogus data is fed in to the software which then tries to do something with that data which it cannot do and therefore cashes.

A simple test might be to start Apple's built in ColorSync Utility and pressing the Repair button. This could print something like:

Header message digest (MD5) is not correct. Fixed.

Which would make sense since a broken MD5 might be the source of your crash. So try that first. On my system, that ColorSync Utility is in /Applications/Utilities and I think it has been there since every version of OS X. Please let me know if that found broken ICC files and if it could fix them. If not (either nothing found or unable to fix) please do post any crash logs on WindowServer you have :)


How well does the new iPad work with the iPad Dock that Apple sells?

Macworld run a first test with a collection of accessories:

In our testing, even many form-fitting iPad 2 accessories work with the third-generation iPad. For example, most dock-cradle accessories—such as speaker docks, chargers, and even Apple's iPad Keyboard Dock—released prior to the new iPad work fine. (This is likely because many of these accessories were designed to fit both the iPad 2 and the original iPad, and the original iPad is even thicker than the new model.)
Similarly, most iPad stands and mounts—especially those that hold the iPad loosely in a groove, slot, or cradle, or on easel-style supports—work perfectly with the iPad. Even Twelve South's HoverBar, which uses a rigid-plastic, corner-hugging cradle, fits the new iPad, albeit with a tighter fit than when mounting an iPad 2.

Even better, Apple's site now states that the MC360ZM/A dock lists compatibility with the iPad 1st generation and the MC940ZM/A dock with the iPad 2 2nd generation and iPad 3rd generation.


How can I disable unused Services in Mavericks?

I assume that you’re talking about the services added by third-party apps. You can do it easily by downloading Services Manager and turn off all the services you’re not using.

There are two options you may choose. Turning off context menu simply remove the services when you use secondary click on the files, images, or text, however, you can still run it from the  menu in menu bar.


How to quick reply with Google Hangouts on iOS 10?

This is a change that Google needs to make for their apps.  It's not something that Apple can fix inside the Google app.

Google might've moved this function or made it a 3D Touch feature, I don't know.


Is there a default location for 'linux too applications'

The short answer is, unfortunately, no there isn't a default location.

But it's not complete chaos.

For command line tools that ship with the OS or get brought in by Apple-supplied applications like Xcode, you'll find it all in /usr/bin. That includes things like the OS X default Python and Perl as well as the Xcode-supplied gcc, clang, make and the other command line developer tools Xcode installs.

For non-Apple command line tools, if the application is well-behaved, it should put them in /usr/local/bin.

Some .app packaged applications that install under /Applications offer command line tools (for example subl offered by Sublime Text 2). If I want to use these from the command line I'll generally make a symlink from /usr/local/bin to the tool under the .app file for the application rather than put the application-specific path on my PATH environment variable.

If you use a package manager like Homebrew to install and manage your command line tools then it's not too much of a hardship to make /usr/local/bin the place for everything you use. Homebrew does a very nice job of keeping it neat and clean and all in one place for you. I can't speak to how well MacPorts or Fink keep things contained under one sub-tree like this.

The exception to the rules are OS X-default daemons like Postgres and such. Those can get scattered and there really isn't a very good way to track them down aside from find and maybe mdfind from the command line.


Safari print preview set scale to 95% as default

Set up your Print Page dialog as you would like, then in the Presets drop menu > Save Current Settings as Preset. Name it & OK.
Then in the same drop menu, Show Presets & make sure that the checkbox for Revert to default is un-checked.


Both applications: built-in Apple Terminal and iTerm2 are only terminal emulators. They do not implement any commands, they just take care of the display.

When you open either a Terminal or an iTerm2 window, it automatically runs a shell (like bash or ksh). This is the program that interprets most of the commands that you know as CLI. When you type a command into a shell, it first tries to match it with its internal set of commands and interprets it accordingly. If a command is not found, the shell will try to find a program which name matches the command. This is what you might perceive aa "unix commands", however they are just standalone programs.

For example: If you run a Terminal on a Mac, it runs bash shell by default. Then if you type date, the shell will find it is not an internal shell command, so it will search the disk (it will search only in places defined in a so called "PATH environment variable") and it will most likely find a program in the following place /bin/date. The shell will execute this program. The Terminal will then print the standard output of the date command in its window.

iTerm2 does not use Terminal in the background, but it will run the same shell. So the flow is: iTerm2 runs bash (by default), bash then executes a date command and date command will send its output to the iTerm2 which will display the characters for the user.


How does the Boot Camp Assistant force the Windows installer to prompt the user to choose an edition of Windows to install?

The latest Windows 7 with SP1 ISO can be downloaded from the Microsoft website Download Windows 7 Disc Images (ISO Files). After entering the product key for Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Upgrade 32/64-bit (English), I was eventually lead to the page shown below. I downloaded the 64 bit Windows 7 ISO.

After mounting the ISO, I was able to determine that a  ei.cfg file does exist in the sources directory. The contents is shown below. The default is to install Windows 7 Professional.

[EditionID]
Professional
[Channel]
Retail
[VL]
0

According to Install Windows 7 on your Mac using Boot Camp, the Boot Camp Support Software includes an answer file named AutoUnattend.xml. The Microsoft document Windows Setup Edition Configuration and Product ID Files (EI.cfg and PID.txt) states the following.

  Note   An answer file takes precedence over these files. If you use an answer file during installation, Windows Setup ignores the EI.cfg and PID.txt files.

Using the Dism command, provided by the latest Windows 10, produces the following list of images stored in the sources\intall.wim file on the Windows 7 ISO. Windows 7 Professional is the image with index of 3.

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.18362.418]
(c) 2019 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

X:\Sources>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.18362.1

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: MINWINPC

DISKPART> list vol

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     D   CCCOMA_X64F  UDF    CD-ROM      5170 MB  Healthy
  Volume 1     E   GSP1RMCPRXF  UDF    CD-ROM      2047 MB  Healthy

DISKPART> exit

Leaving DiskPart...

X:\Sources>Dism /Get-ImageInfo /imagefile:E:\sources\install.wim

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 10.0.18362.1

Details for image : E:\sources\install.wim

Index : 1
Name : Windows 7 Home Basic
Description : Windows 7 Home Basic
Size : 11,710,161,360 bytes

Index : 2
Name : Windows 7 Home Premium
Description : Windows 7 Home Premium
Size : 12,222,587,449 bytes

Index : 3
Name : Windows 7 Professional
Description : Windows 7 Professional
Size : 12,122,886,417 bytes

Index : 4
Name : Windows 7 Ultimate
Description : Windows 7 Ultimate
Size : 12,285,492,779 bytes

The operation completed successfully.

X:\Sources>


What RFID options exist for iOS devices?

What type of RFID tags are you trying to read?  For a motor pool, I would expect you are looking for UHF Gen 2 RFID or even active tags (like Bluetooth LE) as opposed to NFC where you would need to be standing right at the tag on the auto to read it.

We are developing a UHF Gen 2 RFID system for iOS/Android.  The device, unfortunately, needs to be larger than a square since the 10' read range of UHF Gen 2 RFID requires a bigger antenna. Our dev site explains this.


How do I snap a photo on my iPhone with the apple earphones

I successfully took a photo via the following process with iPhone 7 & iOS 10 & the apple earbuds (with lightning connector, and also with lightning to 3.5mm jack variant of Earbuds):

Open the default iPhone camera app and, with earbuds connected, press volume down on the in-line remote.

However, the above process did not work when the apple earbuds were replaced by a set of Anker bluetooth earbuds, paired and connected to the phone.


Mail.app: weird, huge numbers of messages in title bar, Time Machine quit working

I remember solving an issue similar to this, one or two years ago. I don't have a Snow Leopard system handy so unfortunately I cannot be absolutely sure as to the process required. The steps below are what I would do for a Lion system with some notes attached where possible adaptations would be required.

As you suspected, the problem is due to a file becoming corrupt.

Solution:

Quit Mail if it is open.
In Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail and backup the folder contents
While still in ~/Library/Mail, open the subfolder called V2. Inside that folder there should be a folder called MailData, open that folder.
(If you do not see a folder called V2 or a folder called MailData, it is because the folder structure may have changed between OS versions. Proceed to step four in this case.)
There are a few possible files which may need to be removed from the User's mail folder. In the MailData folder (or if you do not have a MailData folder) search for and move the following files to the Desktop:

(I suggest removing them one at a time and relaunching Mail after removing each file. If it works, your job is done.)

DefaultCounts
LSMMap2
Envelope Index   --  (If you have to delete this file, delete the following two at the same time)
Envelope Index-shm
Envelope Index-wal

A possible pitfall to this method: There is a possibility all messages in folders could get marked as Unread. Depending on the users workflow, this could also be a problem; though a solvable problem through sorting read and unread messages temporarily into different folders and recombining later.


Why does the Terminal tab keep popping up on my MacBook Pro when I try to shut it down?

Open terminal and under the Terminal menu item click on preferences. This will give you the pane shown below.

From this pane click on Profiles in the upper left corner of the pane and notice below the Profiles pane but to the right there is a set of tabs.  Click on the Shell tab.  This opens a pane shown below.

Notice that around the middle of this pane is the phrase: Ask before closing. I've drawn a red rectangle around this. Now make sure the Never button is checked.


I got an answer from an on-line friend.

  The procedure varies with different versions of macOS but it should be
  something like this:

  There's a little gear icon you can have visible in Finder windows.
  You need this.  So if you have customised the toolbar to remove it,
  put it back in.  You also need the Time Machine icon in your menu bar,
  and to connect your backup drive if it's not already connected.

  Open a Finder window and pilot your way to a view which shows the
  volume you want to remove.

  Use the Time Machine menu bar icon --> Enter Time Machine

  In that Finder Window highlight the volume / files you want to remove.

  From the gear icon at the top of that window choose "Delete all
  backups"

I did that and now instead of 294.41GB available on my TimeMachine drive, I have 3.74TB.


Double-clicking a window’s title bar to minimize it in Mavericks

Go to the Dock section of System Preferences and check “Double-click a window’s title bar to minimize”.


Command Option P R not working with Bootcamp installed

Resetting the NVRAM won't make your Mac boot into OS X, which is what I am assuming you want to do.

What you need to do is hold down the Option key when booting and then select the macOS partition as your startup.

If you want to boot into macOS from Windows directly, you have to right click the Bookcamp icon and select "Restart in OS X"

For more info, please see Apple's Bootcamp Documentation


Increase Audio Volume of MOV-Video in OS X

One thing you can do is use a video viewer like IINA on macOS, which allows you to go beyond the 100% volume limit. It allows you to set the volume up to 1000%, so if you are trying to view an unusually quiet video, you can increase the volume in IINA without having to crank up your computer's volume too much.

In IINA: You can set maximum volume (100-1000%) in Preference, and use ↑ to set volume larger than 100%.


MIssing setting to go back to traditional mouse scroll

Mouse:

System Preferences +> Mouse =>
Uncheck “Move content in the direction of finger movement when scrolling or navigating”

Trackpad:

System Preferences => Trackpad => Scroll & Zoom.
Uncheck “Scroll direction: natural”

 It seems depending on your hardware, the Preferences Panel changes. The magic-mouse has different settings then a normal mouse. This is for the settings panel with the mighty-mouse. Your mileage may vary.


Notes no longer sync from iOS (iphone and ipad) to OSX (macbook)

Once upgraded, iOS 10.x notes won't sync with OS X 10.10 any more.

Apple has added new features to Notes in iOS 9, and again in iOS 10. Because of these new features, iOS 9 Notes cannot be synced to OS X version before 10.11 (El Capitan), and - as far as I remember - iOS 10 Notes cannot be synced to OS X before 10.12 (macOS Sierra).

Your iOS device had probably warned you before upgrading your notes, but you might have forgotten about that.


Quickly change the font size in Terminal

Why not open terminal preferences and choose to change the defaults. You can then open a new tab at the exact size and color you prefer?
That and using screen or tmux means you can have your environment run regardless of which window you place it in. The zoom increments are better for temporary small adjustments as you so correctly have pointed out.


Can I get iTunes to show all songs with an error status?

You can add the columns iCloud Status and iCloud Download and sort song lists by those criteria.

All songs that didn't upload will include the missing tracks so you can clean them appropriately.

You could also attack the inverse problem. Make sure everything you care about is in the iCloud and matched. Once that process is complete, you could turn off iTunes Match on that computer, quit iTunes and archive the entire music folder. Then you could delete the library folder and start with a fresh library and turn on match to restore all playlists, metadata, play counts, etc...

At that point, you could decide to re-import some or all of the songs so you don't need to download all the music again, but most with broadband are happy to just re-download what they need rather than have everything in one place.

I have done this exact process, and when I go to iTunes and select a track I want to delete, the following dialog pops up:

If you are not getting that dialog, then I can only presume some other corruption is present in your Library.


Your question has already an answer here.

Additionally this can also be done by clicking on the column/row number one time (it should be highlighted), then long-click it until the column/row begins to float. Now you should move and reorder without deleteting references.


How can I run a script when the room brightness has changed?

Lilt will do this.

http://www.jonn8.com/lilt/

I used to use it to change my desktop picture from a light to dark one  when the ambient light changed :D


"which" command doesn't work / path of Safari?

which searches for binaries in the $PATH, a.k.a. command-line tools. User applications are not such tools and not available in the command line.

While Safari.app is an application, the Safari binary is not usually added to the $PATH because it is not a command line tool — if you just run Safari in Terminal your shell will inform you that the command cannot be found.

To find the path to an application, you can use lsregister, which is a tool for adding and querying the Launch Services database, used by macOS in part to find applications.

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/\
  Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/\
  Versions/A/Support/lsregister

You can -dump the database and filter with grep.

/System/L*/Fr*/CoreSe*/V*/A/F*/L*/V*/A/S*/lsregister -dump |
  grep -ie "path:.*safari"

    path:          /Applications/Safari.app

This will return every instance of Safari registered with Launch Services, which will include backups. If you just want to open Safari, you shouldn't be dealing with getting paths and handling it yourself; instead, get macOS to do that for you: open -a Safari.


Can I send files using bluetooth to a device that is not discoverable but previously paired?

Normally, yes. Click the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar, your phone should be listed in the “Devices” category. From there, you can toggle actions on it.


Jailbreaking is the process of hacking the code signing mechanism to allow unsigned code to run on the phone. There are multiple tools used for this and they vary between both model and iOS version.

Unlocking is the process of hacking the 3G chip's baseband to allow SIM cards from other networks without an official unlock from the carrier. There's also an alternative method called Subscriber Artificial Module (SAM) which creates a fake but slightly more authentic unlock from iTunes. I have never needed a hacked unlock (Australia has official carrier unlocks) so I don't know much more about it. Unlocking naturally needs a jailbreak to work, which is why the two are sometimes confused.

If you want a more technical answer you'll need to specify one or the other, as jailbreaking and unlocking are two entirely different types of hacks.

I'd also advise against trying anything you don't completely understand because if you don't know what you're doing you're liable to make irreversible changes to your phone, especially when tampering with the baseband.


Accessing dictionary keys using defaults

defaults isn't capable of doing this.

One of the options you have is plistbuddy :

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "print 'Window Settings':Pro" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist


MacBook-Pro boots to BLACK screen; keyboard back light is OFF; fan is running; gets hot

I'd start by trying to reset both the NVRAM and SMC using the steps below.

Before doing so, ensure you have no external hardware connected and that you're using the built-in keyboard.

Reset the NVRAM

Here’s how to reset the NVRAM on your particular MBP:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: If your MBP does log back in normally, you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Reset the SMC

To reset the SMC on your particular MBP, follow these steps:

Shut down your computer
Keep the power cable plugged in.
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the built-in keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.

After resetting both the NVRAM and SMC, try booting your computer to determine if the issue still persists. IF it does, then test the hardware as per the instructions below.

Run Apple Hardware Test

Your model MBP uses Apple Hardware Test. To use this, follow these steps:

Shut down your MacBook Pro
Restart your MacBook Pro
Press and hold the D key immediately
After a while, Apple Hardware Test (AHT) will start
When prompted, select your language and click the right arrow
When the AHT console appears, you can choose to run Basic tests by clicking the Test button. However, I suggest you select the "Perform extended testing" checkbox before you click the Test button.
Your test results will appear in the window in the bottom-right of the console.

Note 1: that the extended test will take some time. Take a note of the results and report back.

Note 2: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.


"This certificate was signed by an untrusted issuer": what's causing such an error?

Too much to post in a comment so I posted as an answer.

The reason that you are being told the certificate for https://www.myvisaaccount.com/ is not safe is that the root certificate that has been used to sign the www.myvisaaccount.com certificate is not valid on your system.

If you open the Keychain Access application and enter "Entrust" in the search box you should be present with something like seven certificates. Check the expiry date on the one titled "Entrust Root Certification Authority - G2". My guess is that it will have expired.

If the certificate has expired (or does not exist at all), a potential fix for this is to just download and install a new "Entrust Root Certification Authority - G2" certificate. You can find the certificate on Entrust's website here. Just click the "Download" button under the G2 part of that page, this will download a "entrust_g2_ca.er" file to your Mac. Open that and it should automatically open the KeyChain Access application. By default it will likely offer to install to your "login" keychain, change that to add it to your "System" keychain.

It looks like you'll need to install the L1K certificate as well. Install both and then the certificate for the www.myvisaaccount.com should be validated as trusted.


Time Machine keeps notifying me that it deleted old backups because it was full

It might just be a setting in your Notification Center. Go to "Notifications" in System Preferences and see if Time Machine (and that option) are listed and if they are, just adjust the settings there and that should do it. Hope that works.


Weird issues after updating to macOS 10.15 Catalina beta 8 (19A558d)

I was having the same issue, and I just reinstalled the beta by going here: https://developer.apple.com/download/ then clicking "Install Profile" on Catalina. Then went to software update, and it started downloading Catalina again. Everything's fine now (no hanging, dragging works, etc.).


How to combine "Choose folder command" with "adding folder items" function with Applescript

Just remove the handler and change the variable "these_items" for "this_folder", like so:

set this_folder to choose folder with prompt "Select source folder:" with multiple selections allowed
set target_folder to choose folder with prompt "Select backup folder:"

tell application "Finder" to duplicate this_folder to target_folder

Then run the script as a normal script, and it will copy the folder entirely to your destination.

If, on the other hand, you just want the items to be copied (not the folder), you could use this variation:

set this_folder to choose folder with prompt "Select source folder:" with multiple selections allowed
set target_folder to choose folder with prompt "Select backup folder:"

tell application "Finder"
    set these_items to list folder of this_folder without invisibles
    repeat with i from 1 to count of these_items
        set ItemX to item i of these_items
        set ItemX to (this_folder & ItemX as string) as alias
        duplicate ItemX to target_folder
    end repeat
end tell

Either way, you would end up with a duplicate of the contents of the folder.

Now, given your comments below, this version will run the script as a folder action, but will remember your destination folder when you declare a property at the beginning of the script. If you recompile the script, it will ask you again.

property target_folder : ""

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
    if target_folder = "" then
        set target_folder to ¬
            choose folder with prompt "Select source folder:" with multiple selections allowed
    else
        try
            --if the script has a property that has been deleted (i.e., the destination folder), it will cause
            --an error that resolves by asking for a new folder
            set target_folder to target_folder as alias
        on error
            set target_folder to ¬
                ¬
                    choose folder with prompt "Select source folder:" with multiple selections allowed
        end try
    end if
    tell application "Finder" to duplicate these_items to folder target_folder
end adding folder items to

I hope this helps.


macOS Catalina File Structure: Cannot remove

Apple documented that the system will be read only publicly during wwdc.

https://devstreaming-cdn.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2019/710aunvynji5emrl/710/710_whats_new_in_apple_file_systems.pdf

You can read more in the public videos and apple developer / beta / seeding discussion forums and possibly in whatever release notes came with how you obtained your beta build of macOS.

I don’t have a system to test, but use the same ls command as on Mojave and earlier to check flags and you might find these are protected via SIP and you would need to disable SIP to make temporary changes as an admin. The video says you can disable SIP and make changes, but the protection is engaged again after every restart and updates should be expected to replace and repair any altered files.


I don't believe there's an interface to the iCloud backup data that will let you pull it down to a computer. An alternative, if you're after a local backup in addition to iCloud, is to plug your iPhone in and use iTunes to explicitly back up the device (right-click the iPhone in the left-hand pane and select Back Up...

I have iTunes set not to sync with my phone, as I normally backup to the cloud, but I'll occasionally do an explicit iTunes backup for redundancy's sake.


Run an application as another user in Mac

You can‘t run UI applications as user A while being logged in as user B. The easiest way to get something similar is to enable Fast User Switching and then switch between user A and user B as needed. But each user will have its own Finder etc then, you can‘t use applications on the same screen at once.


Is reinstalling Mavericks possible via recovery mode with two HDs and without a backup?

If you reinstall OS X from Recovery HD or the installer app (or Internet Recovery), your Mac's HD will not get erased.  If the installer needs to erase things, it will tell you, so go slowly and really read the words if you get a dialog box and choices.

If you are concerned, install OS X onto any free USB drive and then get a good backup of the system you care not to loose.


Is SmartMouse enabled for your Virtual Machine? If not, clicking inside the Parallels window will capture the mouse and you will need to use Ctrl+Option (Ctrl+Alt) to release it back to your Mac.


Prevent text messages from being sent to recipient's email address

The sender needs to attach their number to their iMessage "Send & Receive" list.

On the iPhone they can go to Settings -> Messages -> Send And Receive -> Add iPhone phone number along with their Apple ID email.

Then make sure the phone number has a check mark next to it.

Then try texting them again and see if it emails them the message, it shouldn't.


Another cause of the "minus" button being greyed out in Disk Utility is that it doesn't allow you to delete the first partition on the disk.


If you are setup for POP (which it appears you are) then check this out...

That preference would be in Outlook menu >  Preferences > Accounts > your POP account > Advanced > Server tab.
Uncheck the option “Leave a copy of each message on server”.


Drawbacks to merging PDFs in Preview.app

Merged PDFs from Preview are perfectly valid and follow the standard. I've never found any incompatibilities with them.  It does merge it into a single PDF, and any pages that are deleted are removed from the file.  You can test this by checking file sizes first before merging, then after merging, then after deleting some pages.

The only drawback I've found with Preview is that the Apple code for writing PDFs seems to default to writing PDFs which are faster for Preview to render, but which are larger than typically put out by Acrobat.  (At the moment, I can't find the link that originally proposed this hypothesis... It's been a number of years.)  For example, you might open an Adobe-created PDF in Preview, immediately save it to another file, and notice that it has expanded.  This change in file size does not change the image quality in any way.

In general, the change in file size is not too much of a deal.  It's only in rare cases (such as 120MB scanned PDFs) that I worry about which app I use to create the PDF.


The two model numbers don't seem to refer to the exact same configuration. Model MD232LL/A appears to reference to the base model (as noted in Apple's MBA Model Identifier KB). The KB also notes:

  If you have a custom configuration the Model Number and Configuration
  in the table may not match. Please use the Model Identifier to confirm
  the model of MacBook Air for custom configurations.

One example from Amazon - the specs include:

  1.8 GHz Intel Core i5 Processor
  256 GB Flash Storage
  4 GB DDR3 RAM

In the page from Decide.com, the specs for model Z0ND0002Z include:

  Core i7 2 GHz
  8 GB RAM
  512 GB HDD

It's probably that the Z0ND0002Z model is used by retailers that provide more customization, since Apple uses the MD232LL/A model in its online KB. The excerpt from the KB also supports this conclusion.


Keyboard Shortcut to manipulate window position

How to navigate macOS application windows like a boss

Cmd Tab : switch to the next app (icon to the right)

Cmd Tab, followed by Cmd `~ : switch to the previous app (icon to the left)

Cmd `~ : cycle through all open windows of the app in focus. (Minimized windows are skipped.)

Below is an animation demonstrating what it looks like when windows are cycled.

This is a much faster way to navigate than Mission Control. And if you use Cmd H to Hide applications you're not using, you can keep your workspace free of clutter. Hidden apps are revealed again when tabbed to.

This answer assumes the use of an English keyboard, where the back-tick key's shifted character is the tilde. On non-English keyboard layouts, the back-tick key may have a different shifted character.

Precision control

For those looking for a solution similar to Magnet, but free, you can customize the AppleScript below, place it inside of an Automator Service, and trigger it with a keyboard shortcut.

tell application "System Events"
    set activeApp to name of first application process whose frontmost is true
end tell

set theApp to activeApp
(* These dimensions are for a 27-inch iMac. Customize as necessary. *)
set appWidth to 1280
set appHeight to 1440

tell application "Finder"
    set screenResolution to bounds of window of desktop
end tell

set screenWidth to item 3 of screenResolution
set screenHeight to item 4 of screenResolution

tell application theApp
    activate
    reopen
    set xAxis to (screenWidth - appWidth) / 2 as integer
    (*
    FOR LEFT PLACEMENT:   set xAxis to 0
    FOR CENTER PLACEMENT: set xAxis to (screenWidth - appWidth) / 2 as integer
    FOR RIGHT PLACEMENT:  set xAxis to (screenWidth - appWidth) as integer
    *)
    set yAxis to (screenHeight - appHeight) / 2 as integer
    set the bounds of the first window to {xAxis, yAxis, appWidth + xAxis, appHeight + yAxis}
end tell

Code originally written by Amit Agarwal and Tetsujin. Combined and modified by me.

How to create a simple keyboard macro with Automator?

After triggering the Service, you may see the message: "AppName.app" wants access to control "SystemEvents.app". Allowing control will provide access to documents and data in "SystemEvents.app", and to perform actions within that app. You must click "OK" to use the Service.


I can't guess what corrupted the files or the database, but Time Machine would allow you to roll back whatever corruption or changes you don't like and get back to a point in time.

To do that, open Time Machine and restore the library file / overwriting the wrong version.


Bonjour visibility dropping over ethernet only

Bonjour Sleep Proxy on Yoshitonme is broken.
When your Mac Mini goes to sleep it goes off the grid and Bonjour no longer can wakes it up via ethernet. No fix for it and none expected.

Work around is go to System Preferences > Energy Saver >  Slide "Computer Sleep" to "Never" and reboot Mac Mini.


MBA mid 2011: Artifacts on screen after wake from deep sleep

Those are very characteristic failures of a hardware nature.

the LVDS cable that carries the signal could be faulty or loose
the GPU could be having problems (perhaps heat related, perhaps not)
the LCD panel could be physically failing or loose or electrically failing
much less likely causes would be RAM, Storage or software (erase and reinstall)

I would start with contacting support in the country of sale and/or country where you are now:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HE57

They will be able to advise you where and how to request a quote for service and then you can decide to pursue hardware repair or further troubleshoot software. Faulty software could cause this, but it's unlikely to come and go and you might waste time reinstalling the OS, clearing preferences, etc…

If the issues only happen after sleep, you might also consider a failure of the RAM or storage where the sleep image becomes corrupt or the part of the RAM that backs the GPU has problems. Again, on an Air, there are no parts that Apple recommends anyone but a trained technician to service, and they have access to additional resources and can send the diagrams to engineering if they don't have enough experience on that particular model. Most Apple store geniuses would know typical failure modes of each model since they see so many broken machines, but they don't work from home or by phone unless you have a paid support plan.


AppleScript to save current Safari window in webarchive format?

I have created a bundled script that saves the current tab to the desktop as a webarchive. Credit to newzealandpaul for his webarchiver shell command that powers this script. You can tweak the code to fit your specific needs, but this should do what that code in your question is trying to do.

Here is the bundled script: SaveWebarchive

This works with the webarchiver command bundled;

set fileName to "foo"

tell application "Safari" to set targetURL to (URL of document 1) as string
set commandPath to POSIX path of (path to resource "webarchiver.command")
do shell script "" & commandPath & " -url " & targetURL & " -output ~/Desktop/" & fileName & ".webarchive"

Note that the downloaded script may have the Script Editor interface showing the Log over the entire window.


iMessage conversations changed to Bonjour; how do I change them back?

In addition to unselecting Bonjour, which I agree was insufficient, I found that under Messages > Preferences, my Apple ID had been deselected.  Once I re-selected it, I could then identify the phone numbers and email addresses I wanted to use with messaging.

I suspect my original cause was my daughter's wanting me to turn off messaging for her email address (she is young and so her stuff is under my Apple ID) and somehow that turned off the MacBook's messaging entirely, not just her address.  Curiously, my iPhone was affected.

I also suspect I selected Bonjour in a futile attempt to fix messaging on the MacBook.  Hope this is helpful.


How can I increase brightness on my macbook above the limit?

According to reviews screen should have the following brightness levels:

MacBook 12" 2017: about 350 cd/m^2
MacBook Pro Retina 13" Late 2013: 330 cd/m^2

So the MacBook 12" should be at least equally bright as your MacBook Pro Retina 13".

You cannot increase the screen's brightness above 100 %. Please contact Apple or your vendor to exchange your MacBook or to repair it.


annoyance: latest version of Skype under Standard (non-admin) user on macOS 10.13

So, I was right that Skype has a problem, because it is prompting me to perform the auto-update, but supplying the credentials is not enough.  I have to kind of "hand-hold" Skype through the update process, and open the correct window even though there is no indication from Skype that I need to do this.  I was still having this problem after upgrading to Mojave (10.14) and I'm glad I finally figured out this work-around.

In order to successfully update Skype in macOS as a limited user, you must do it "manually".

When the pop up notification appears saying An update is ready to install. Skype is trying to add a new helper tool. and asking for authentication, do not enter your admin credentials yet.

First, click on the Skype menu then About Skype.

With the About Skype window open, now you can enter your admin credentials.

After you've entered your admin credentials, you should notice a green Update button is now active in the About Skype window.  Click the button.

Sometimes I have to enter my admin credentials again when the update process starts.  This is normal.

Skype should automatically reload with the updated version.  Check the About Skype window to confirm you are on the latest version.


How to apply Preview's Actual Size to every picture?

I tried and opened few different sizes pictures.
Then I used the "Select all" in the Preview Edit followed by "Actual Size".
It worked for me :)


Retrieving password for non working email address that is attached to an iCloud account

While I can assume that you ask due to having forgotten the password, it is not clear from your question.

In case you still know the password, you can log on to the iCloud account at appleid.apple.com, change the e-mail address and make it the primary e-mail address.

NOTE: Obviously, you cannot use an e-mail address you already associated with an Apple ID in a different account.


How to change the font size of the Reminders app?

I believe the right answer is: it is not possible.


External drive seagate not working in Mojave OS

macOS cannot write to NTFS-formatted drives without the aid of a third-party utility. If you were able to write to the drive before updating, I would suspect you had such a utility installed, such as Tuxera NTFS or Paragon NTFS, and it needs to be updated to support macOS Mojave.


Try HoudahGeo. Full disclosure: I am the developer of HoudahGeo

HoudahGeo offers several ways for geotagging photos. My favorite is automatic geocoding using a GPS track log. Such a track log can come from an iPhone app or a GPS track logger. It has your exact position recorded every second or so. HoudahGeo matches the times on your photos to the timestamps in the track log.

Using a track log has the added benefit of you being able to retrace how you got from one point to the next. With HoudahGeo you can create a KML file that lets you visualize your travels in Google Earth with photos pinned at the locations where these were taken.

If you use both your iPhone and your digital camera to take photos at the same locations, HoudahGeo's "Geocode from reference photos" can copy GPS information form the iPhone photos to other photos taken at about the same time.


How to set up a local calendar while using iCloud for other calendar on mavericks

A co-worker figured this one out for us:

In Calendar, go to Calendar: Accounts, select your accounts you are using in Calendar and uncheck "calendar" from the section where it says "Use With".

Once there are no internet accounts available, Calendar will allow you to set up an "On My Mac" local calendar.

Once that's set up, re-check the "Use With: Calendars" checkbox and all should be well.

Caveat: for us, we were able to check and uncheck this setting without having to set anything up again.  I won't guarantee this will be the case for you, so be sure you know how to set up your accounts again and as always, have backups.


Drag and drop only going one folder deep in Finder

So what worked for me was to turn on Spring-loading delay in System Preferences > Accessibility > Pointer Control.

I have no idea why it would not work without this, but it works fine now. Well, almost fine. I still do not get the little green plus sign when dragging files to a new location, but I am able to drag through into subfolders.


How to make an Apple Script use its local directory?

This is how I'd handle a scenario such as you've described.
I'd place the execute.jar file in the Resources folder within the application bundle, e.g.:
../Untitled.app/Contents/Resources/

Then use the following example AppleScript code within the AppleScript script that is a part of the AppleScript application bundle:
set pathToJAR to ¬
    quoted form of ¬
    POSIX path of ¬
    (path to resource "execute.jar")

set shellCMD to ¬
    {"/usr/bin/java -jar ", pathToJAR} ¬
        as string

do shell script shellCMD

Now no matter where the application bundle is saved to or copied/moved to, as coded, it will ascertain its location to the resource, the execute.jar file, and be able to run a do shell script command that will execute the shell command accordingly.

To address your comment:

I have an image that stays next to the .jar and is supposed to open with it. If I manually open the contents of the application bundle and run the .jar, the image is loaded in; if the AppleScript code is run, the image is not found. Any ideas?

Try the following example AppleScript code instead:
set pathToMe to ¬
    quoted form of ¬
    POSIX path of ¬
    (path to me)

set shellCMD to ¬
    {"cd ", pathToMe, ¬
        "Contents/Resources/; ", ¬
        "/usr/bin/java -jar execute.jar"} ¬
        as string

do shell script shellCMD


Can I use Philips Hue White Ambiance B27 Bulb for Apples Home Kit with every bulb fitting?

You will aslo need a Philips Hue Bridge. If you want to integrate it with  Apple HomeKit you need to have the newer bridge (square with round corners) and not the old one (circular).


How can I tell who posted a photo in a shared iCloud photo stream?

Open the photo in the Shared Photo Stream, then tap to show details if necessary.

It should show the poster of the photo, as below ("Posted by you"):

Individual devices can't be determined from this view though — only the Apple ID.


Disable system-wide ctrl-click as right-click in Mavericks

In my VMWare Windows 7 guest, I have found (after reading this post) that using Ctrl+Command+LeftClick works the same as Ctrl+LeftClick would in a hardware Windows machine.


Connect a Bluetooth keyboard as a game controller to an iPad?

Go to settings - accessibility - switch control, then set up switches using external devices and use the keyboard buttons. Then create a recipe and add all the buttons as taps on the screen where the buttons are located. To make it easier, set the preset recipe as your controls, and when you triple press the home button it will turn on the keyboard taps.


Where can I find *all* screensaver files on MacOS Sierra?

In Mojave you have two kinds of screensavers:

The abstract ones (these are the ones you already found: /System/Library/Screen Savers)
The slideshows: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Slideshows.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Content/Styles


So it turns out I think that you actually do not want to. Because on the new MBPro with Touch bar (great, great, great - way underused device) there is no driver for windows other than for windows 10... Is this correct?...Because the only escape key is on the touchbar, windows 10 is effectively the only option. Any one can confirm my reasoning?


How can I make a calendar appointment reminder remind me "5 minutes later" on iPhone like BlackBerry?

Unfortunately, iOS does not have a directly equivalent option. There are some workarounds and apps given here: Is there any way to change the snooze time for alarms on the iPhone?


I have seen many forum entries about problems with removing optical drive to put a second hard drive. It seems the camera/airport cable doesn't like that or may be damaged.

In my case, as I said, the Wifi and Bluetooth were not working anymore but the fact that there was a problem with the Airport card probably troubled the OS.

So I decided to unplug the camera/airport cable from the motherboard to completely remove the faulty Airport card.

It is done like that

This solution worked : now, I don't have Wifi/ Bluetooth nor iSight camera, but the computer sleeps perfectly fine and I was able to upgrade OS without any problems and it still sleeps.

So I presume that the faulty Airport card was still sending bad information that made the computer wakes up with no valid reason even with all Wakes' conditions unchecked. I hope that may help other people.


Parallels Desktop to OS X brower actions

Go into your Virtual Machine Configuration, on the left menu select "Internet Applications" and the right toggle "Web Pages" to say "Open in Mac OS X".


Dual boot Linux and Lion on FileVault 2 disk

Installing rEFInd and following the included instructions does work for me using OS X 10.8 with FileVault2 and Debian GNU/Linux using grub-efi.

In short: Use a protective MBR and install rEFInd to the efi system partition (esp) (use rEFInd's install.sh --esp). Rename the refind folder on the esp to BOOT and rename the efi file aswell to allow faster loading of rEFInd.

In Debian mount the esp, create a subdirectory debian in /efi/EFI, load the efivars kernel module and install grub-efi.

Make sure you read also the general instruction on that page regarding installation.


Does My Photo Stream work without an Internet connection? (local wifi only)

To the best of my knowledge, Photo Stream will work whenever it is connected to iCloud.

It doesn't matter if the connection is via your carrier data plan or via wifi to the internet. But you must in either case be able to connect to the Internet.

Of course, you must have cellular data turned ON on your device in order to connect to iCloud via cellular.

Without the Internet connection to iCloud, you will not be able to use Photo Stream simply between your devices, even if they are all on the same wifi network.


Apple magic trackpad 2 not recognized by mac

Make sure the Trackpad is powered on (there is a switch on the back)
Make sure you are using the Trackpad with a Mac that has Bluetooth 4.0 and runs at least OS X v10.11
Connect the Trackpad to your Mac with a USB to Lightning Cable
A message should appear that it is now paired. Do not remove the cable before that.


Can Mid 2012 Macbook pro be upgraded using nvme ssd using an adapter

There are M.2 PCIe to SATA adaptors that you could use, but there are two problems: Firstly, you're not going to see the faster speed of the NVM RAM, because the SATA interface is the bottleneck, and won't go any faster than 6 Gbps.
Secondly, ensuring that the adaptor card and the new SSD module will all fit together inside your laptop: neither being too big, nor rattling around loose.

The simplest thing is to replace the existing mechanical hard drive with a 2.5" SATA SSD. This will slot in exactly in place of your old drive, and will cost less than an NVM RAM module.

(Links to UK stores.)


iPhone8 vibrates in response to some interface - how to disable?

You can turn them off in Preferences -> Sound and Haptics -> System Haptic feedback.

Note: I’m not sure about the English labels for those menus. Please edit an answer if I’m wrong.


Triggering an automation / shortcut on iPhone after a call is over

I found this in the Apple support documentation which defines communication triggers for messages and emails right now. There are no communication triggers for calls. So I believe we have no option but to wait and check if Apple plans to add triggers for calls.


How do I permanently disable the scrollbar?

I found this application that claims to do what you asked for.

The LionScrollbars


How can I echo shell script in Automator?

To get your shell (bash) script to output to the screen continually so that you can see the progress, you need to launch it from AppleScript.  Basically, this is a script that is launching another script.  Use the script below to kick of the script that contains your ffmpeg command.  You can even pass arguments to your script as you would normally.

For this example, I have a simple bash script that prints out the first command line argument.

#! /bin/bash
# test.sh
echo $1
exit

Next, is the AppleScript code that kicks off the bash script

tell application "Terminal"
   do script "<path>/test.sh 'Hello World'; exit"
   activate
end tell

Note, that if you have any strings with spaces that you need to pass, they MUST be enclosed in single quotes. Double quotes will cause an error in AppleScript.

When you run the script, it will open a Terminal window and anything that gets output will display on the screen.


Delete Users and Separate User and Groups

Normally, if you download something (apps, files, anything): it is saved in your User account's Download folder.
When applications arrive, it is usual to copy or install them into the root level /Applications folder. This location is accessible to all users.
If you want applications to be available to only one user, then move them to <user>/Applications. You may need to create this folder inside your user account.


iTunes playing album tracks in wrong order

iTunes version 12.5.3 lists this as a potential problem in iTunes that has been fixed.

  Fixes an issue where albums may play in an unexpected order

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1814


Can't access password protected smb share

I had the same issue with my Netgear Nighthawk R8500 until I reduced the router's password to 14 characters, as suggested by user137327. Since the router's password is also used as the Samba password, perhaps the cause is related to the legacy of Samba and Lanman password limitations:

"passwords are limited to a maximum of only 14 characters"

"Many legacy third party CIFS implementations have taken considerable time to add support for the stronger protocols that Microsoft has created to replace LM hashing because the open source communities supporting these libraries first had to reverse engineer the newer protocols—Samba took 5 years to add NTLMv2 support"


When I traveled to the EU with my iPhone 6s having Verizon service on it, it worked perfectly fine there since it's a world phone.
Although verifying with your carrier would be the ideal thing since carriers could have rules of not accepting phones not branded by them and also to verify for 100% that the LTE bands are correct for their network but as far as operation wise I could confirm that I used my iPhone 6s in the EU back in March.


How do I Convert FLAC files to ALAC for iTunes?

Have a look at Max. Freeware and Open source. Has a GUI.


what's about shared folders? I use them in good Read/Write speed.


Clean OS X install, keeping Time Machine history?

Well, I tried it, and indeed the Time Machine history is preserved (at least with OS X Yosemite). I did the following:

Erased the hard drive
Installed Yosemite
Restored from my Time Machine backup drive

After all this was done, and with the backup drive connected, I entered Time Machine on my Documents folder, and there was the history.

Good work, Apple!

Edit: I finally had to buy a new MacBook Pro, and used Setup Assistant again to transfer all my files from my old MacBook's Time Machine archive. It worked well, and when I was done I booted from my new MacBook everything was there.

Interestingly, when I re-enabled Time Machine on my new MacBook, still attached to my old MacBook's Time Machine disk, I got the following dialog (actually with different disk names):

Sure enough, after I chose "Inherit Backup History" my new Mac was using the old Time Machine backup disk, history in all. Way, way cool.


sudo is needed to change permissions of files and folders that the current user account does not have permissions to modify.

In this case, the chmod myname required sudo because some of the files and folders being modified were owned by root.

By default, the first user account is an administrator. This is likely the account you are currently using. Administrator permissions are not equivalent to those of root. root exists above administrator users on OS X.

With regard to how best to deploy Joomla on a production server, this is better asked in a separate question.


iCloud drive sharing on Sierra (Add People)

I was unable to find any official Apple KB article explicitly stating that High Sierra is required for sharing files with people on iCloud. I have the same OSX version and experience exactly the same problem.

There is a workaround, however, that is officially supported by Apple - you can use iCloud.com and share files from there (PH21250). While not elegant, it certainly gets the job done.

Performing Google query for this issue reveals that this feature is mentioned explicitly with High Sierra software (CNET or AddictiveTips). While this is not official evidence that High Sierra is explicitly required to support this feature, it may suggest that Apple is forcing users to update to the latest software to receive such feature.


Is Cellular Network Data Usage persisted to a new iPhone

Apple apparently has no official information about this and, given your stats, I now believe we simply can't know about it without an app.

If all you want is get to know your data usage the safest way is checking it with your carrier, because the iPhone data really isn't all that precise. Another option would be jailbreaking your phone and using some cydia app such as Data Counter, Download meter or even SBSettings, which would still use the iPhone data and still wouldn't be as precise as your carrier can be.

Now, if you're fast enough you can even get some app for free, on the Apple Store, though DataMan Lite might be enough for your needs.


What built-in utilities are available in macOS for managing/monitoring process/disk/memory/IO/file?

There are a lot of tools, both in the graphical interface and at the command line, for viewing and configuring these various parts of macOS' operations. I'll give you a summary of the most relevant ones.
For viewing processes in the GUI, Activity Monitor is the primary tool. It can also view other per-process things like memory usage, and disk and network activity (and it also gives some overall stats at the bottom of the window). You can also view open files and network ports for processes you own by selecting them, and clicking the Inspect (circle-with-an-"i"-in-it) button in the toolbar, then selecting the Open Files and Ports tab. And it can kill (force-exit) running programs.
At the command line, top is my favorite tool. I use top -u -s5 to show top CPU-using processes (updated every 5 seconds, because the default of 1 second is too fast). top -orsize will show top "real memory" usage instead. And it shows overall stats at the top of the screen. ps is the other main tool; by default, it only shows your command-line processes, so use ps -A (or -ax or -e) to show all processes. Check the man page for lots more options. You can use kill to kill processes by PID, or killall to kill them by name (/program). (Warning: on some other OSes, killall does different, and much more lethal, things, so think before you type.)
A lot of the process management in macOS (especially running background processes) is handled by launchd, and you can query and manage it from the command line with launchctl (warning: this can be a bit confusing). Apple doesn't provide a GUI for interacting with this, but there is a third-party option: LaunchControl from soma-zone.
For memory: since that's pretty much used by processes, use the process monitoring tools to see what's going on. You can get some whole-system virtual memory stats from vm_stat (warning: these stats are in pages, not KB or MB or anything like that) or sysctl vm.swapusage (or if you want to drink from the firehose, sysctl -a vm). Memory management is thoroughly automated, so there aren't really any tools to configure it.
For disks: Disk Utility is the GUI tool of choice, both to see how things are formatted and to make changes (erase/format/partition/etc). At the command line, diskutil is its counterpart.
For files: if you just want to look around, it's Finder in the GUI. Apple makes a fair bit of the filesystem invisible in the Finder (which is sort of a "don't mess with this unless you know what you're doing" indication); if you want to see the normally-hidden parts, you can toggle show-all mode with Command-Shift-Period (this also works in standard open and save file dialogs). At the command line, it's ls (I use ls -AleO@ to show hidden files and various obscure attributes).
If you want to see what files (/folders) are taking up all your space, you can get a basic summary with Apple menu > About This Mac > Storage tab, and a little more info by clicking the Manage button there. There are a bunch of third-party utilities that give more detail. At the command line, it's df to show which volumes are getting full (df -h for human-readable sizes), and du to see how much space is used by each subfolder (and subsubfolder and...) (I mostly use sudo du -xhd1 /path/to/folder to give a human-readable listing that only goes one folder level deep). Note that you'll need to grant the Terminal Full Disk Access to let its commands see into "private" areas of the filesystem.
For file activity, in addition to Activity Monitor, you can use lsof to get a (huge) snapshot of which files are open (it las lots of flexible -- and confusing -- options), and fs_usage to get an (extremely detailed) running log of file accesses.
For I/O, it really depends on the type of I/O you're interested in. If you want to see what's connected, System Information (click the Apple menu, hold the Option key and choose System Information) will give you a huge amount of information about the system's configuration (and not just about I/O devices/attachments). system_profiler is its command-line counterpart.
You can use iostat to look at I/O throughput per device (mostly disk access).
For network I/O, use the per-process tools above (and sudo lsof -i to see open network ports). To view and change the network connection settings, use the System Preferences -> Network pane and its command-line counterpart networksetup. For detailed network status, use the Network Utility, netstat, and ifconfig.
Other I/O... is rather scattered around. Several types, like Bluetooth, Displays, Sound, etc have panes in System Preferences. If you have a specific type you're interested in, you'd have to specify it.


How to change spelling library in Mac OS X with a shortcut?

You can set the Language spelling to look for spelling in multiple languages.

My example is English and Spanish.

In the Keyboard System preferences go to the Text tab.

Set the Spelling dropdown to: Automatic by Language

Then opening the Spelling dropdown go down to Set Up…

Drag your two (or more) preferred Languages to the top. And then hit the Done button.

Thats it.

Spelling will now recognise the language you are working in.


Is there a video player for OS X that will float to top and avoid the cursor?

You can use afloat. This lets you configure VLC to float on top and be somewhat transparent when you move your mouse over it, as well as allowing clicks to pass through to the application behind.


No startup / boot chime; how to bring it back?

Consider trying this out:

Launch Terminal.app and type the following command:

sudo nvram StartupMute=%00
If prompted enter the admin password.
Quit the Terminal app..
Make sure the volume is up before you restart your Mac.
Restart your Mac.

You should hear a F-sharp chord sound when your Mac boots up.

If you wish to disable it, follow the same steps as above and type the following command instead:

sudo nvram StartupMute=%01

Tested on a 16" 2019 MacBook Pro running macOS Catalina 10.15.3


WifiDiagnostics files filling up drive even with logging disabled

(Answering my own question, since others seem to be having this issue as well.)

The "hyper+w" (command+option+control+shift+w) key combo is triggering the the wifi logging. Note that "hyper+>" also seems to trigger this. I haven't been able to figure out why it's happening, but that's the culprit.

I've used Karabiner Elements to disable those keyboard shortcuts entirely, to prevent accidentally triggering this wifi logging. Here's the relevant section from the karabiner.json file to make those key combos trigger an escape instead of the wifi logging. To add these rules, go to the "Misc" tab, and do the export/import "Open config folder", then edit the karabiner.json to include the following two rules.

"rules": [
    {
        "description": "Disabling command+control+option+shift+w. This triggers wifi logging.",
        "manipulators": [
            {
                "from": {
                    "key_code": "w",
                    "modifiers": {
                        "mandatory": [
                            "command",
                            "control",
                            "option",
                            "shift"
                        ]
                    }
                },
                "to": [
                    {
                        "key_code": "escape"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "basic"
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "description": "Disabling command+control+option+shift+>. This triggers wifi logging also.",
        "manipulators": [
            {
                "from": {
                    "key_code": ">",
                    "modifiers": {
                        "mandatory": [
                            "command",
                            "control",
                            "option",
                            "shift"
                        ]
                    }
                },
                "to": [
                    {
                        "key_code": "escape"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "basic"
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "description": "Change caps_lock key to command+control+option+shift. (Post escape key when pressed alone)",
        "manipulators": [
            {
                "from": {
                    "key_code": "caps_lock",
                    "modifiers": {
                        "optional": [
                            "any"
                        ]
                    }
                },
                "to": [
                    {
                        "key_code": "left_shift",
                        "modifiers": [
                            "left_command",
                            "left_control",
                            "left_option"
                        ]
                    }
                ],
                "to_if_alone": [
                    {
                        "key_code": "escape"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "basic"
            }
        ]
    }
]


Appstore does not save partially downloaded file

You should use wget/ curl based methods and Apple Developer website for downloading it. I am not a fan of App Store managing huge downloads. Since I am not doing iOS development, I can work with old version too, so don't need App Store to recognise the download and give me an update.

Can't update Xcode
Download older version of Xcode?

I don't know about CURL, but in wget you can do

wget -c https://site

-c lets you continue the download where you started.

Reclaim the space using apps listed here:

How can I figure out what's slowly eating my HD space?


How to fix a Macbook that does not always draw its internal screen after waking from sleep and having unplugged external display while asleep?

I would pay attention to two factors:

1) Do you have an external keyboard attached?

2) The power situation - how/when sleep happens is affected by this

3) If the lid is closed at the time you move the mac.

A couple of examples will help illustrate this:

Recently I found that my external keyboard was not waking up the closed lid mac as I thought it should.  I found that this was because the power was unplugged and the 'lid closed' operation only worked with the power actually plugged in.

As another example I found that when my computer was asleep, in order to wake it up - without opening the lid! - the trick was to plug an external keyboard/mouse in and hit a key / move the mouse.  This then took the mac out of sleep (though again that may depend on whether you have power plugged in or not).


Can you see a list of all open tabs in Safari?

Here is an AppleScript that will get the name of all Tabs in all Safari windows and show them in an unsaved TextEdit document.

You can save this as a plain script and access it from the Script menu on the Menu bar if you enable it in Script Editor's Preferences.  Or as an App and it can be placed on the Dock.

tell application "Safari"
    set windowCount to number of windows
    set docText to ""
    repeat with x from 1 to windowCount
        set tabcount to number of tabs in window x
        repeat with y from 1 to tabcount
            set tabName to name of tab y of window x
            set docText to docText & tabName & linefeed as string
        end repeat
    end repeat
end tell
tell application "TextEdit"
    activate
    make new document
    set the text of the front document to docText
end tell

The above source code was modified from Generate a List of Open Safari Tabs with AppleScript.


Navigating between the different areas in Xcode with a keyboard

The shortcuts you are looking for are the following

The project navigator is: ⌘+1 (Cmd-1)
The issues navigator is: ⌘+5 (Cmd-5)
Main Editing area is (once you have selected a file in the
issues or project navigator):

⌘+J (Cmd-J) and, after release, ↵ (Return) or
⌥+⌘+` (Opt-Cmd-`)

The Mini Map: ⌃+⌘+⇧+M (Ctrl-Cmd-Shft-M)

Hope that helps.


How can I downgrade a mid-2010 21.5" iMac from Yosemite to Snow Leopard?

Your iMac was delivered with 10.6.6 (somewhat later with 10.6.7).
When you have the original (grey) discs that came with it you can use disc 1 to install the Snow Leopard version (not the disc of another machine). Then update it to 10.6.8


Can the thief erase and clear my iPhone before "Find My iPhone" has a chance to detect its location?

Yes. Sadly, a thief might steal 10 phones and discard the ones that are locked hoping that some are not protected with Find My Friends like yours was.

The phone can only report location if it has a viable network connection, so it is entirely possible it was taken to (or placed in) an area with no cell coverage and no WiFi coverage and/or simply turned off.

However, if the thief or anyone else does erase the phone, the iOS 7 activation lock will eventually report back to you since the device will need a viable network connection to become active again once it's been erased so you might keep that device in your iCloud list even for 6 months or longer in case the thief is patient and hopes to resell it at some point down the road.


Is Quicktime always pre-installed on the Macintosh OS?

Every version of Mac OS X has QuickTime. QuickTime Pro is/was an optional paid extra, which included extra codecs and additional functionality.

The situation with "classic" Mac OS was rather more complicated, but I'm guessing you only care about OS X.


cannot paste my metadata keychain password

Clear the input field of the "mdwrite wants to ..." pop-up
Get the "metadata" login password
Put your cursor in the input field of the pop-up
Go to the menu and under "Edit", go down and click "Paste".
Worked for me, because right-clicking while the mouse was in the field had the usual editing pop-up come up behind the "mdwrite ..." pop-up.
I'd never seen that before, but some pop-ups must have a higher priority than others ...


Can I upload my Garmin Forerunner running track data from my iPad 2?

There are a few devices I found that have been recently added to the market

Garmin Ant+ adaptor for iPhone
Wahoo Key for iPhone

Both allow you to connect and record in real time exercise data in association with their and other third party apps (Garmin Fit and Wahoo have a list here)

What I have not been able to confirm is whether it will provide upload facility from devices after being out of range as you want.

My assumption is yes it can, since you can get swim watch data entry.

All the products were originally designed for iPhone and I don't see any issue with running them on an ipad


lpr fails to print asking for manual paper feed

I tried a simple hack that works. Do not know if this is the best clean solution (I have doubts!), however it works for me, at least for now.

I simply removed from the PPD of the printer the following lines:

> *OpenUI *InputSlot/Media Source: PickOne
> *OrderDependency: 10 AnySetup *InputSlot
> *DefaultInputSlot: Manual
> *InputSlot Manual/Manual Feed: "<</MediaPosition 4>>setpagedevice"
> *CloseUI: *InputSlot


input numbers to navigate 'audio menus' when using phone tethered to your mac via facetime

I found the answer to this one, its very simple, just make sure your on the facetime window and then type the number on your keyboard


MacOS: iTunes switches to safe mode occasionally

Safe mode is (usually) triggered by holding  Cmd ⌘  &  Opt ⌥  as you launch iTunes. It's a diagnostic mode for troubleshooting.
I can't imagine why it would do this alone, unless you have stuck keys… but you'd have very probably noticed that by now.


Xcode 12.3 is not responding a few seconds after opening it

This is a recently reported bug with Xcode 12.3. I am not aware of any response from Apple yet, but you might be able to fix this issue by turning off the over-the-air test device builds.

Top Menu: Window > Devices & Simulators
Uncheck "Connect via Network" for each physical device

I recommend filing bugs with Apple and watching the forum thread about this.
You also revert to Xcode 12.2.