Best way to send Videos from the iPhone?

If you have a jailbroken device, you can use AirBlue Sharing to send videos over Bluetooth - see here for the developer's description and here for a Lifehacker post about it.


Why am I unable to change the password on my Mac?

I looked around into this issue and there must have been an error when the computer was disconnected from the AD (Active Directory) and the domain controller. One thing I read is that reconnecting it back to the AD/server and disconnecting it again will allow you to change your password. That method was discovered from here. Another thing could be an error with the school's domain controller. The systems administrator setting a preferred domain controller can fix this issue as pointed out here.


2015 MBP does not boot with disk image from 2012 MBP

You've already figured out the cause of your crashes.

What you need to do is either one of two things:

Create a Time Machine Back Up of your old system and do a fresh install of macOS on your new machine and transfer everything using Migration Assistant
Do a fresh install of macOS on your new machine and using a network connection migrate all of your apps and settings over the network using Migration Assistant.

Keep in mind that if you are attempting to copy over an OS that is earlier that 10.10 it will NOT work on your Mid-2015 MBP.


Is there any iOS offline maps app which also supports searching for an address offline?

MapsWithMe does that. Available for iPhone/iPad and Android. MapsWithMe Pro for iPhone has offline search. Not an address search though, i.e. you can search for a street, city, restaurant or POI, but not for city+street or street+POI.


Why do I keep jumping between items when scrolling in reading list?

I’ve also had this problem. Couldn’t figure out why it was sometimes randomly jumping and sometimes not. Maybe I flick the screen in strange ways? I was able to work around it with this Pythonista script. It reopens the same page in the same tab. Breaks it free from the reading list. So the whole scroll to the end to jump to a different item doesn’t work anymore, but I never really used that, preferring to manually pick the next item.

From the link:

import appex
import requests
import webbrowser

def main():
    if not appex.is_running_extension():
        url = 'http://arstechnica.com'
    else:
        url = appex.get_url()
    if url:
        webbrowser.get('safari').open(url)
    else:
        print('No input URL found.')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()


Change the icon of all the folders on mac

Most standard system wide icons for the macOS are stored here:
/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources

The folder icon in which you're interested is named GenericFolderIcon.icns.

If you're running Mac OS X El Capitan (10.11) or later, due to System Integrity Protection, you won't be able to modify these files.

However, if you turn off System Integrity Protection, you'll gain the ability to edit the icon files. Here're instructions:

Boot into recovery mode (boot while holding down ⌘R)
Open the terminal
Type csrutil disable.
Reboot normally.
Now edit the icon file(s).
Repeat steps 1–4 to re-enable System Integrity protection, except that the Terminal command you'll use is csrutil enable.

Needless to say, be very careful when turning off System Integrity Protection and editing system files. There's a lot of potential to royally screw things up when doing so.

For step 5, you'll need some sort of program that can edit or generate ICNS files. Your best bet is probably to search around this site or with Google to find recommendations. You may have to try several options before you find something that fits your needs.


Forcing use of SSL connections in web dependent applications

A preliminary before getting to a solution: I think you would be unhappy with a solution which tried https with every site.  For sites which do not respond to https there would an unacceptable delay waiting for some timeout period before trying again with http.

My solution for you is GlimmerBlocker.  This a proxy server running on your Mac.  As a result all web applications connect via GlimmerBlocker.  Though frequently used as an ad blocker, it has much more functionality including rewriting web requests or returning a redirect to your browser.

Here is a description of the Request and Response Flow inside GlimmerBlocker including how URLs can be modified.  Pretty sparse description, but can you started.

The first post in this blog has a more detailed recipe for converting http requests to https.  This can be applied to specific web sites which you know do support https as well as http.

Using GlimmerBlocker beyond what is out of the box is not for the fainthearted, but it has the power to do almost everything conceivable to web requests.


Docksend in Transmit 4 by Panic no longer works after upgrading to OS 10.7.3

I used the Using DockSend help menu and it worked like a charm for me. I'm on 10.7.3 as well:
You might just need to toggle it off, wait (perhaps reboot) and toggle it back on. Here are detailed instructions from the help menu:

So, following that, you'll end up here:

Make sure that Use DockSend checkbox is checked! If it is and it still won't work, I would reinstall Transmit. If it still won't work after that, definitely contact Panic support.


Is Chrome Just As "Safe" as Safari with Regards to Passwords?

Chrome uses a combination of an internal database (LoginDatabase) and Keychain to store passwords.

LoginDatabase stores some metadata, including usernames but not passwords, about each login that is stored. The site's URL, username and password are stored in Keychain. (The reason for the split is that extra metadata needs to be saved that isn't supported in Keychain.)

If you have your existing Keychain and a new Chrome profile, Chrome will not "remember" any logins. There has to be a matching entry in both LoginDatabase and Keychain for Chrome to display the login.

As far as password storage in Keychain being "safe", anything storing data in Keychain is only as safe as your Keychain password. Whether or not it is "safe" is a highly subjective.

(See this and this for more information.)


Close the terminal window you're getting those errors in and open a new one.


How to find activity log with time stamps of when applications were opened and closed on MacBook Pro

The console app is in your utilities folder which is in your Applications folder. This app is for browsing thru log files. To find when an application was started open the console app and click on Mac Analytics Data on the left side of the console app. Then you can search for the name of the app you are looking for. See the image below. I started the app Preview at around 7:16 pm

This file does not give STOP time but that may be in a different log file.


launchd plist format for running a command at a specific time on a weekday

There are a few caveats with creating launchd .plist files.  I'll summarize them below:

Each Weekday must be a  entry specified in an  placed in the StartCalendarInterval dictionary entry.
Weekdays go from 1 to 5.  Sunday is 0 and 7 (I know, right?)
You have to know how you want your item to run and place the .plist in the appropriate directories/folders:

~/Library/LaunchAgents - Specific to the user.  Will run when the user is logged in.
/Library/LaunchAgents - Specific to all users.  Will run when the user(s) is(are) logged in.
/Library/LaunchDaemons - Runs regardless if user(s) is(are) logged in.  Must use sudo to load .plist

My preference is #3 (load as a LaunchDaemon) so my script will get executed whether I am logged in or not.  When using as a LaunchDameon, you must use sudo to load the .plist:

sudo lauchctl load com.user.fileCleanup.plist

Note:  As for the naming convention in my example, I like to use com.user.< name of my script >.plist  This helps me in identifying and debugging any issues should they arise and keeps with the Apple naming convention of com.apple.some-app.plist  This is entirely optional on your part.

Below is a script that I am using to clean up work files (I modified it for your specific time parameters). You can edit this file with your favorite text editor (I use Komodo Edit), but TextEdit or even nano or vi from the command line will work.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.user.fileCleanup</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Users/allan/Documents/Scripts/Unix/fileCleanup.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
    <!--  Weekdays are 1 - 5; Sunday is 0 and 7   -->
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>1</integer>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>2</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>10</integer>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>2</integer>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>2</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>10</integer>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>3</integer>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>2</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>10</integer>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>4</integer>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>2</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>10</integer>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>5</integer>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>2</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>10</integer>
        </dict>
    </array>

</dict>
</plist>

Bonus Footage....

This next part is optional...

So that I can get some feedback that my scripts executed and what the result was, I created a small AppleScript function that invokes the display notification (it's quite simple for my needs, but obviously could be improved).

on run argv

    set Message to item 1 of argv
    set Title to item 2 of argv
    set aud to item 3 of argv
    set STitle to "Terminal"
    set Snd to "Blow.aiff"

    if (aud = "sound") then

        display notification Message with title Title subtitle STitle sound name Snd
    else
        display notification Message with title Title subtitle STitle
    end if

end run

Within my script, I check for success or failure, depending on what that is (i.e. a file existing in a particular directory), it will generate a notification.  If not, another notification, but this time with sound!

#!/bin/bash
if [ -f "$SOURCE" ]
then
    scp -q "$SOURCE" "$TARGET"
    osascript $ASCRIPT_DIR/notify.scpt "Podcast Transfered successfully" "$TITLE -- SUCCESS" "nosound"
else
    osascript $ASCRIPT_DIR/notify.scpt "The file $TARGET does not exist" "$TITLE -- ERROR" "sound"
fi

Here's the sample output:


What are the potential consequences of partially-disabling SIP for yabai

On a traditional UNIX system—including many major platforms still in use today, such as Debian—any user or process with "root" privileges is considered to have absolute control over a machine. There is basically nothing the OS will not allow a root user to do, whether it's rewriting system files, adding code to other processes, adding code to the kernel, you name it. If you've ever been told not to run programs as root unless absolutely necessary, this is why.
macOS, being itself a UNIX operating system, also behaved this way for many years. As recently as OS X 10.10 Yosemite, once you gave an app your root/administrator password, it was free to do anything it wanted, and macOS would not stand in its way.
All of this changed with the release of macOS El Capitan in 2015. For the first time on the Mac, Apple decided to define a set of actions which they believed no user or program—even one with root privileges—should ever be able to perform! Among these restrictions included installing kernel extensions from unidentified developers (the "kext" protection), injecting code into projected processes, such as apps made by Apple (the "debug" protection), and writing to certain protected system directories (the "fs" protection).
Apple called this new set of restrictions "System Integrity Protection", or SIP for short, and they also made it possible for advanced users to disable, by running a Terminal command from within recovery mode. Disabling SIP reverts your computer to the traditional UNIX behavior of letting root do whatever the heck it wants. Apple also made it possible to individually disable certain restrictions—for instance, running csrutil disable && csrutil enable --without debug will allow injecting code into protected processes, but still leave SIP's other protections in tact.
Suffice to say, disabling SIP grants you a great deal of power over the way your Mac operates. I've recently been learning how to swizzle methods in Objective C; when SIP is off, you can use this to replace code in existing apps, which is really quite fun. When an app does something I don't like—whether it's Zoom making all its windows rudely float on top, or the Dictionary app not respecting my Mac's proxy settings—I can go ahead and change it.
The danger, however, is that if I can inject my own code into any other app, other software potentially could too! You don't need to be particularly creative to imagine the mischief an evil app could cause if it could modify every other app on your machine. For example, an app could inject its own advertisements into Safari, or tell Microsoft Word to send all of its documents to a server in North Korea.
On the other hand, evil apps with root permissions can wreck plenty of havoc without disabling SIP! They won't have any trouble installing bitcoin miners, reading all of your browsing history, and holding for ransom a great many (although not all!) of the files on your hard drive. In fact, a lot of these attacks don't even require root to work. Installing apps is just inherently somewhat dangerous—not unlike inviting someone into your house—unless they come from the Mac App Store, where they're guaranteed to be sandboxed.
I'm only aware of one real-world issue caused by disabling SIP, although it was pretty bad! A couple of years ago, there was a bug in Google Chrome's updater (which sometimes requests root permissions... ugh...) which caused it to overwrite a number of core system files, rendering Macs unbootable. On Macs with SIP enabled, Chrome was prevented from deleting these files, and Chrome carried on its merry way. Presumably, Google never tested Chrome on a Mac without SIP, and so did not discover the problem prior to release. In Google's defense, they did fix the issue quickly, and I'd imagine Chrome now gets tested on Macs without SIP. (But suffice to say, uh, this is why I don't like Google Chrome.)
You should also be aware that on Apple Silicon Macs, Apple does not allow iOS apps to run while SIP is turned off, presumably because developers expect iOS software to only be usable in a locked-down environment. (Those developers are also wrong, because Jailbreaks exist.)

Given all of the above, my general recommendation is as follows:

If you don't have a reason to turn off SIP, leave it on. It won't do any harm.

If you have a reason to turn off SIP, go ahead, and don't let it keep you up at night. You need to be a bit more careful about which apps you run as root. You need to do that anyway.

Other people can and will fall elsewhere on that spectrum. Hopefully you now have enough information to make your own decision!

Okay, so, "anything you want" is perhaps an oversimplification. For starters, modern versions of macOS have a number of other protection systems in addition to SIP, such as TCC and AMFI. The thing is, once SIP is off, there is in theory nothing to stop a process from disabling those as well—who is going to stand in the way, when you can literally rewrite kernel memory? I suppose there are probably protected CPU registers and such.


How can I list the partition table of an unmounted disk image?


Resizing mac partition on a volume with boot-camp

For all my partitioning, I use and recommend iPartition.

With its intuitive yet powerful user interface, iPartition makes it easy to create, destroy, resize or format partitions on your hard disks, whether internal, external, fixed or removable.

iPartition even allows you to modify Boot Camp partitions without any problems. iPartition will reconfigure the Windows partitions automatically.

You can use iPartition on drives that contain Boot Camp volumes; in fact, you can even resize your Windows partitions, and let iPartition take care of reconfiguring the Windows boot process for you.


From: http://kevin.kevandisa.com/2013/04/how-to-restore-macbook-to-factory-settings/

  Start Computer up, holding OPTION key
  You should now see two hard drive icons, select the one labelled “Recovery”
  Select your language
  Click on Disc Utility
  Click on Macintosh HD
  Select the “Erase” tab
  Erase the Disc
  Now go back to OSX Utilities – Select “Reinstall OSX”
  The recovery setup should be smart enough to download the latest
  licensed
  Operating System for your computer (in my case it was Mountain Lion
   10.8.3)
  Reinstall to Macintosh HD

Also see: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718 and https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4571


Can gaming damage my MacBook Air in the long run?

You've got nothing to worry about. They're designed to handle it. Heat in general does degrade computers, but the laptop will be very, very obsolete before the extra heat generated from gaming adds up enough to matter.


Why does dictation reload after not using for 10 minutes?

By default, Enhanced Dictation waits 7 minutes (420 seconds) before quitting its processes. You can override this default by writing a different value to its preference file.

For example, if you want Dictation to wait 60 minutes (3600 seconds), open Terminal and execute the following command.

defaults write com.apple.inputmethod.ironwood DelaySecondsUntilTerminatationOffline -float 3600;killall DictationIM

If you want to return to the default value, you can remove the override using the command:

defaults remove com.apple.inputmethod.ironwood DelaySecondsUntilTerminatationOffline;killall DictationIM


What Does A "There is a user sharing this computer..." Window Mean?

Apparently, you've enabled File Sharing in the Sharing section of System Preferences. Someone on your network has connected to your computer, either as a registered user or as a guest.

Unless this kind of access is absolutely required, it's good security practice to disable both File Sharing and the Guest user in System Preferences -> Sharing and System Preferences -> Accounts and Groups, respectively.


"Sharing only" account not visible in "Users & Groups" since Mavericks

I have had this issue as well and I found a solution:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4404 on the Apple support website.

Just type the following two commands in terminal:

Quit and reopen System preferences and the sharing account will show up:

sudo dscl . create /Users/root GeneratedUID FFFFEEEE-DDDD-CCCC-BBBB-AAAA00000000

and then:

sudo dscl . create /Users/accountname UserShell /bin/bash

Replace "accountname" in the commands above with the missing account name.


I'm assuming that the deployment/install script was put at /usr/local/packager/packager.py when it was installed. Apparently, you can use this script to list the packages that are installed:

/usr/local/packager/packager.py list

Unfortunately, the script that you used to install PHP doesn't appear to have an uninstall feature. However, you should be able to remove the installed content that was installed from /usr/local. It is probably a good idea to examine the contents of the /usr/local directory first to confirm the contents:

ls -al /usr/local

From what I can see, the script is installing the software with prefixes like "php5-*", and is linking to the 'current' version of that software using a symbolic link named "php5". The commands below will unlink the symlink, and remove the installed versions of PHP that were installed using the script mentioned above:

sudo unlink /usr/local/php5
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/php5-*

To remove the supplemental configuration file that was installed with the updated PHP software, you may be able to remove the config file at /etc/apache2/other/+php-osx.conf:

sudo rm -rf /etc/apache2/other/+php-osx.conf

Then restart Apache:

sudo apachectl restart

Note: the /usr/local folder shouldn't have much inside of it unless you've installed 3rd party software there. You may find a few PHP installs there that have names like "php5-5.3.x...", "php5-5.4.x...", and "php5-5.5.x...". The rm command above should remove any variants of this naming scheme. Removing the additional Apache configuration file should allow Apache to start normally after the module has been removed.


Can you use a bootable macOS USB created on a MacBook pro, to install macOS on another MacBook Pro?

Yes, it is perfectly normal to create a macOS bootable installer USB key on one Mac and use it to install macOS on any other Mac.

The bootable installer is not customized for a particular Mac hardware, can be used to install macOS on any Mac that supports running the particular version of macOS.

You can use your 2009 MacBook Pro to download OS X El Capitan installer from this link:

OS X El Capitan
How to upgrade to OS X El Capitan

After downloading the installer, you can follow the below instruction to create to create a bootable USB installer:

How to create a bootable installer for macOS


MBP 13 early 2015, but battery was manufactured at November 2016. Why?

No, I do not believe this is suspicious. The early-2015 model 13" MBP is still a current model. So, unless you actually bought the MBP before November 2016, this is not at all suspicious.

To put your mind at ease you can check your MBP's serial number at a number of sites to retrieve the manufacturing date amongst other info. You can access one such site here.

[EDIT]

In response to question update.

The fact your serial number search shows it was built in either Week 24 (June) or week 51 (December) backs up my assertion. This is a new MBP built in December 2016 (after the manufacture of your battery and before you purchased it).

This confirms there is absolutely nothing suspicious about your MBP.


Why doesn't my MacBook recognize the original HD any longer?

If the original drives does work in an external case but not internally than patrix has the right idea.

We know the old drive is good as it works in an external case
We know the SSD does not work at all because it doesn't work externally or in the Mac.

In both of those cases drives are not working internally, one known bad and one known good.

Unfortunately that points to a problem with the MacBook itself. It could be a loose connector (at the drive end or the motherboard end) And by connector I mean data and power, check both, end to end. Look for breaks, bends, crimps (that are not part of cable routing). Look for dirty or obstructed contacts. Blow some canned air into the contacts. Ifixit.com has come really great take apart instructions for just about every recent model of Mac/iPad/iPhone. Follow along with there instructions and pictures and look for differences in what theirs looks like and what yours looks like.

Logic dictates that the problem is inside your MacBook. the problem now is finding out where and then how to fix it.


[ this solution is assuming an Apple Computer ]

Make sure your Personal Hotspot is turned off. If your personal Hotspot is turned on every time your plug the device into the Macbook it will ask for permission and make you enter your PIN password.

  “When the personal hotspot is turned on, it will ask every time you
  connect your iPhone to a computer because it’s requesting access to
  the hotspot network over cable.”

  - Dan VanWinkle

  Source: https://www.igeeksblog.com/how-to-stop-trust-this-computer-message-on-iphone-ipad/


Buy macbook pro 17 from amazon vs apple?

I recommend buying an official Apple.com refurb - you'll likely save more than from Amazon and they often have very current models.  The machine will be indistinguishable from new, aside from the packaging and comes with a full warranty.

Put the savings towards buying cheaper Applecare from Amazon :)

You can follow stock availability here: http://refurb-tracker.com


Locate
    ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver(UUID).plist (may be 2x)

as well as

~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver(UUID).plist.lock

Put both in trash.

Empty trash.

Restart.

This most likely will not change your graphics settings; however, it was my experience that doing this whole process in "scaled" display from the beginning, allowed me to go back in to settings after restart, and choose "Best for display" and resolve my issue.
YMMV
10.9.1 - mac Mini with 2x displays; orig. issue: best for display output 'out of range' on 2nd display; native settings verified.


Which wifi repeater to buy that can be OS X configured?

You can use Apple's AirPort Express to extend wireless networks. This can be configured from AirPort Utility in OS X.


Sync Imessage Group Chat History between devices

I have a solution that I did a long time ago which you can try at your own risk. First make a backup of the following folder, maybe in a removable device to be on the safe side.

What you need:

Backup the following files from your user folder. Don't delete any folder beside instructed one. Library is hidden so press cmd+shift+. to make them visible. Use same button to revert it back

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat

~/Library/Message

~/Library/Preferences -> Find all the files that contain the string "iChat" or
"iMessage"

Note: Kindly do this without being on the Internet from the start else iCloud from iPhone can sync with your MacBook later and you might get an issue.

Now as a crucial step:

Rename

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat  -> ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat_old

~/Library/Message -> ~/Library/Message_old

But, Find all the files in ~/Library/Preferences that contain the string "iChat" or "iMessage" and CUT them into a separate folder or external HDD. Be sure to remember where you copied them from! Don't rename this folder or files under it.

After this, copy all the original folder that you have backed up

For example:

com.apple.iChat -> to the original place under ~/Library/Containers so here you will have two file com.apple.iChat_old and com.apple.iChat

The same goes for the message folder. However, you have cut, so paste back the file that contains iChat and iMessage back to the Preferences.

DO NOT START THE MESSAGES APP and restart your computer

Open Messages, your old chats should all be there. And sync with your iCloud from Mac and it should come to your iPhone also.


If you're going to be typing in German for a while, it may be useful to switch to the German keyboard layout as needed. Settings > Keyboard > Input Sources You can use a keyboard shortcut or the menu bar icon to quickly swap between the layouts when working on assignments (but with much faster access to the accented letters you want.

Otherwise you are looking at manually editing your U.S. layout to change the individual function of the keys, which is do-able but likely less desirable.


Is it possible to get the app icon of a built-in app on iOS?

In a word, no.
Not on iOS as there is no way to get to that particular icon without jailbreaking the device.
However there are 3rd-party tools (iMazing is one of them) that allow you to copy apps from the phone to the Mac and explore the filesystem on the phone.
Not sure if they will give you what you want but I do believe that the apps that do this have demo modes that will let you find out.


Make iCloud photos upload from phone less aggressively?

Turn on Low Power Mode. Then automatic uploading won't happen.

Some people keep Low Power Mode turned on all the time. If you don't, you may turn it on before taking the photo and then turn it off after you've done processing it or uploading it to social media.


Macbook pro 2011 Late cannot enable dGPU again

After the steps below, I'm seeing again both graphics cards in "About This Mac" of my MacBookPro 17" Late 2011, running Catalina Patcher. See

Shut down the computer.
Plug in the power adapter to a power source if it's not already connected.
Press Control+Option+Shift+Power keys to reset the SMC
Boot and press Control+S immediately after you hear the startup sound.
Then enter this command:
nvram fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e30f9:gpu-power-prefs=%00%00%00%00
Then type 'exit' to reboot.
Then shut down again the computer.
Boot and press and hold the Command+Option+P+R immediately after you hear the startup sound.
Hold these keys until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for a second time.


How can I successively trigger an AppleScript very quickly?

Adding > /dev/null 2>&1 & to the end of the do shell script command should work. This redirects the stdout and stderr of the do shell script command to /dev/null and runs the shell script in the background, meaning that AppleScript no longer needs to wait for the command to return stdout or stderr before the AppleScript script can finish. That means that it finishes and can be run again much more quickly.

You also shouldn't need the try handler at the beginning. The following modified script should work:

set currentVolume to output volume of (get volume settings)
set volume output volume (currentVolume + 2)
-- play volume changing sound at new volume
do shell script "afplay /System/Library/LoginPlugins/BezelServices.loginPlugin/Contents/Resources/volume.aiff > /dev/null 2>&1 &"

I got this tip from MacScripter (an excellent resource for AppleScripting) in a post about running multiple instances of a shell script.


Mac mini wakes 2 seconds after going to sleep

Its possible that a USB device (keyboard, mouse, external USB hard drive, etc) is not behaving.

If you have other USB-connected devices, does this still occur when they are disconnected? You don't mention any additional USB devices being connected, so I'm assuming only a keyboard/mouse combo.

Disconnect all USB devices but the keyboard/mouse then type the following command in terminal. Once typed in, disconnect the keyboard and mouse:

sudo shutdown -s +2

Enter your password, (because sudo needs it,) and the Mac will sleep in 2 minutes. If it stays asleep, then the keyboard and/or mouse are not at fault. Try again with just one of the two devices attached to see which one is the culprit.

If the keyboard/mouse don't seem to be at fault, then test again with other devices connected & narrow it down.

Secondly, Bluetooth keyboards and mice can also wake the Mac from sleep:

In System preferences > Bluetooth Advanced... section:


Time Machine/Time Capsule: What is the difference between "Waiting for index to be ready (100)" and "Waiting for index to be ready (101)"?

The answer to your question is that the difference between these two codes (100 and 101) is not publicly documented by apple.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/23429422?ac_cid=op123456#23429422

However pondini.org/TM/D2.html gives reasons why and how to fix those errors, and the issues you are experiencing.


To answer your questions:

  Are new (2017+) CPU's affected by this flaw, too?     If so, when will
  CPU's start to come out that are not affected?

Yes.  It affects virtually every CPU going back to 1995

  It affects potentially all out-of-order execution Intel processors
  since 1995, except Itanium and pre-2013 Atoms.

As for when new CPUs will be released, that's impossible for anyone here to even speculate as it will require a hardware redesign.  Apple won't even be able to speculate as it's dependent on availability from the chip manufacturers.

  Will new (affected, unsold, still in shop) products have their CPU's
  replaced?

Nobody but Apple (actually all computer manufacturers for that matter) will be able to answer this.  Given that new, unaffected CPUs don't currently exist, it's reasonably expected that new machines purchased will still contain the flawed CPUs.

  My concern is that I will purchase my MB pro in March, just to find a
  short time later that Apple has had all products on the market
  recalled and their CPUs replaced.

It's a valid concern.  Nobody here can predict what actions Apple will take if any.  The best advice I can give is to take a wait and see approach given that March is two months away and there is bound to be further developments with respect to this issue.  If you need a new Mac for "work" (i.e. to generate revenue that pays the bills), bite the bullet and purchase it.  If this is something you can put off as it's not critical, I would take a wait and see approach.

  Apparently, some users, particularly users performing more "heavy duty" tasks, may experience a performance drop of up to 30%

According to an Intel Press release, they don't anticipate seeing any significant drop in performance for real-world deployments.  Chances are, you will not notice any drop in performance.

Intel has also released patches for these flaws and is working with OEM partners (like Apple) to push them out to customers.


Can I send as someone else using Mail.app on iPad?

Mail.app on iPad does not support sending as or send on behalf of. So there is no way you can do this via Mail.app.

But you can try this on a Macbook for example:
in Mail > Preferences > Accounts it will show the account you have set up. Next tothe emailaddress, type a comma and then the other email you want to send from. Save it and now when you compose a mail, you can choose which one to send from.


Should I use raid 0 with my optibay drive?

As the saying goes: "The difference between RAID 1 and RAID 0 is that the zero stands for how many files you're going to have after a hard disk failure."

Putting your 320 GB hard drive and your 120 GB SSD will allow you to share the space in between the two drives, but the risk in doing so is that you may have a failure at some point that makes your data unrecoverable.

If you want to set up your hard drives in a RAID 0, I would recommend also setting up a backup solution that regularly backs up your files to a location that is outside of your laptop. That makes sure that your data can be recovered in the event of a failure.


Does the 2011 13" MacBook Air have a longer battery life than the old one?

Apple hasn't changed the claims about battery life. 7 hours for the 13,3", 5 for the 11,6". It's a bit strange that according to Apple the batter life didn't change. Maybe we'll get a nice surprise.

Found it here: http://www.macrumors.com/2010/10/20/apple-announces-new-13-3-inch-and-11-6-inch-macbook-air-models-with-flash-storage/


Assuming it to be same as the one in keyboard predictions on iOS, Apple would have put poor Siri's name for this tool too. The best way I found to train it is to use it multiple times. For a persistent error, text replacement to the rescue.

Where does Apple's predictive keyboard get its “contextual” content from?

This question is for iOS, but it's not unreasonable to assume that prediction algorithm can be same in both places.


EPUB files are not syncing through iCloud for iBooks along with iOS 9.3

In iOS iBooks try tapping the "Collections" selector top center of the app below the system time and turning OFF "Hide iCloud Books".


Settings ---> iCloud ---> enable "contacts".
All your contacts will be save on iCloud. And every apple device with your Apple ID will have your contacts.


VirtualBox/Vagrant Fully Remove Virtual Machine to Clear Hash Sum Mismatches, etc

Mavericks has left me in tears, over a similar issue.

I upgraded to Mavs using appstore and, it went fine for a couple of weeks.

I think that the problem occured after I upgraded to the latest Virtualbox (I know nothing of Vagrant, Precise32, and I don't want to).

There came an occasion when I couldn't  VBoxManage - restart. It shut down the VM but, would not and cannot restart the VM.

Right now, I'm trying to work out a way to brute force Mountain Lion to install over Mavericks. I'm completely out of other ideas, apart from to get a tattoo that reads, 'Don't upgrade, just because it's there - it will only cause you to cry in your beer'.


Not requiring Apple app review for external app testing

Beta App Review (which is a faster process than a normal app review) is always required for external testers.

The testers on your other app are probably registered as internal testers. There's no review requirement for pushing updates to internal testers.


You're confusing the terminal with the text editor, as other commenters have pointed out. Still, there are a number of ways to make the terminal more vim-like, or vim more terminal-like.

If it's vi-style keybindings in the terminal you're after, add set -o vi to your ~/.bash_profile (assuming you're using bash). This will allow you to use vi-style keybindings at the command line (hjkl movement, modal editing, etc.)

If you just want to be able to execute unix commands from within vim, prepend ! to the beginning of those commands at the (Mac)Vim command line. For example :!pwd will print the working directory.

There are also plugins like Conque which allow you to run a shell from within Vim, which sounds like it may be exactly what you're after.


How can I stop QuickTime from opening WMV embeds?

Click on a .wmv file once, to select it

Then click Command + I (That's the Command key and the letter i key at the same time)

In the resulting dialog box, click the Open With arrow

In the pulldown menu select the app you wish to use to open .wmv

Click the Change All button to force all .wmv files to be opened with your selected application

You're done


Try out from the following options to make it work:-

Reset Network Settings
There is a chance that the culprit is the networking. To be specific, your iPhone is syncing photos to the cloud. Yet, the networking is not fine. Thereby, you see that it keeps deleting and restoring photos. Under this circumstance, you should reset network settings. Just go to “Settings” > “General” > “Reset” > “Reset Networking Settings”. Then, enter your password and confirm “Reset Networking Settings”.
Turn off Cellular Data
Moreover, this issue may result from unstable or malfunctioning Cellular Data. Therefore, you can try to fix it by turn off cellular data. Just Launch “Settings” app. Then, in the new screen, you can tap the “Cellular” option. In subsequent “Cellular” screen, you need to tap the green switch beside the “Cellular Data”.
Turn on Airplane Mode
If you encounter this issue when you attempt to import files, you can solve it by turning on “Airplane Mode”. Likewise, get access to the “Settings” application on your iPhone. Then, locate the first “Airplane Mode” option and tap on the switch next to it.
Change iCloud Settings
What’s more, there is a likelihood that the criminal is improper iCloud settings. On your Mac, get into “System Preferences” > “iCloud” and uncheck the “Photos”. Then, in “System Preferences”, go to “iCloud” > “Photos” > “Options”, and next uncheck “My Photo Stream” and “Photo Sharing”. After that, in your iPhone, you should delete the account for iCloud. After that, re-sync iOS device with iTunes. Finally, set up an iCloud account on your iPhone again.
Update iOS System
Furthermore, this problem can occur from iOS system bugs. As we all know, older iOS will always contain some bugs. Hence, you should check the version of your iPhone system. If it isn’t the latest version, you have to update it. You can go to “Settings” > “General” > “Software Update”.
Reset All Settings
Assuming that all the above solutions cannot help you, you can try the “Reset All Settings” option. This can eradicate multiple system issues. But, it should be the last resort in that it will erase all of your iPhone data. Hence, you had a better back up your iPhone in prior to “Reset All Settings". It can save you from difficult data recovery, similar to Outlook recovery on PC. After backup, just go to “Settings” > “General” > “Reset” > “Erase all Contents and Settings”.

Source:- https://www.datanumen.com/blogs/6-solutions-iphone-keeps-deleting-restoring-photos/


How to set up OS X server for serving static files over HTTP?

You do not need OS X Server to serve basic files. The non "server" version of OS X comes with a fully functional apache environment pre-installed. OS X Server is only for more advanced server features which are generally only useful if you're a sysadmin for small business.

To enable the pre-installed apache you just go into system preferences -> sharing and tick the box for "web sharing". Now apache is running on port 80, available to anyone who can access the mac.

You can configure it by editing httpd.conf (for example PHP is installed but disabled - just search for "php" in the config file and un-comment it, then restart apache. htaccess files are also disabled by default). Server Fault is the best place to ask questions about editing httpd.conf.

Since you installed OS X server I suspect you now have two separate copies of apache installed. One configured to run on port 80 (the one in system preferences) and one on port 8000 (the one in os x server).


What is the technology used in iOS 11 settings migration (moving blue dots / particles pattern / animated QR code?)

The technology can be thought of very much like an animated QR-code. The main principle of data encoding is very much like QR-codes, but obviously with the difference that as time goes forward, the displayed data changes as an animation.

In addition there seems to be the use of a neat trick with two different colors shown in quick alternation, which makes it possible for Apple to "hide" or make less obvious the clues that are used for the receiver of the data to synchronize with the signal (i.e. figure out where the boundaries of the encoded data is).

With a traditional QR code these sync markers are much more evident as they are big black square boxes with white borders that are set different places in the code to make it easy for the receiver to figure out what's encoded data, and what's not part of the code.

Much more details are available in these two patent applications by Apple:

US Patent 9,022,291
US Patent 9,022,292


Go to the Running Safari And Press Enter Using AppleScript

The "System Events" must to the key pressing.

for example:

tell application "Safari"
    activate
    tell application "System Events" to key code 36 #return
end tell

I don't know, what the key pressing is for, so now has no effect.

A working example, where the download list is shown and then by pressing "space" the list is cleared:

tell application "Safari"
    activate
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "l" using {command down, option down} # cmd-opt-l
    delay 1
    tell application "System Events" to key code 49 #space
end tell


How do I remove contact photos from the messages app in iOS 10?

There is no way to change the layout of the Messages app to not display photos at the top of the screen.

If you go to your list of conversations and then tap on one, as the screen transitions you can see the difference in the height of the navigation bar at the top that contains the photo. (The conversation list uses a standard-height navigation bar that should be identical, or within a few pixels, of the height in iOS 9.) I took screenshots and measured - it's 42 pixels. Using normal-sized text (as set in the Settings app) that's approximately one line of text.


How can I find out a portable external hard disk's hardware details from within macOS?

There is the following command.

system_profiler SPStorageDataType

You will have to parse the output. For example, I have a external HDD with a single volume named RONSPASPORT. The output relevant to this drive is given below.

RON2PASPORT:

  Available: 29.27 GB (29,266,157,568 bytes)
  Capacity: 500.11 GB (500,105,216,000 bytes)
  Mount Point: /Volumes/RON2PASPORT
  File System: Journaled HFS+
  Writable: Yes
  Ignore Ownership: Yes
  BSD Name: disk2s1
  Volume UUID: BD65890D-BBAB-357A-B073-6B24625466F5
  Physical Drive:
      Device Name: 5000BEV External
      Media Name: WD 5000BEV External Media
      Protocol: USB
      Internal: No
      Partition Map Type: MBR (Master Boot Record)

From the output, one can see this is a WD 5000BEV.

Also there is the command below.

system_profiler SPUSBDataType

For the same external HDD, the following output is relevant.

        External HDD    :

          Product ID: 0x0705
          Vendor ID: 0x1058  (Western Digital Technologies, Inc.)
          Version: 1.75
          Serial Number: 57442D575836304139326384913837
          Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
          Manufacturer: Western Digital
          Location ID: 0xfd130000 / 6
          Current Available (mA): 500
          Current Required (mA): 2
          Extra Operating Current (mA): 0
          Media:
            5000BEV External:
              Capacity: 500.11 GB (500,107,862,016 bytes)
              Removable Media: No
              BSD Name: disk2
              Logical Unit: 0
              Partition Map Type: MBR (Master Boot Record)
              USB Interface: 0
              Volumes:
                RON2PASPORT:
                  Capacity: 500.11 GB (500,105,217,024 bytes)
                  Available: 29.27 GB (29,266,153,472 bytes)
                  Writable: Yes
                  File System: Journaled HFS+
                  BSD Name: disk2s1
                  Mount Point: /Volumes/RON2PASPORT
                  Content: Apple_HFS
                  Volume UUID: BD65890D-BBAB-357A-B073-6B24625466F5

This provides more information, including the serial number.

  Note: The system_profiler command has the option -detailLevel level where the level can be mini, basic or full.


Opening a new Terminal window when it's running on another desktop

By Golly, I think I've found it this time.

Fire up Utilities/AppleScript Editor. Copy/paste the lines below. Save it and add it to your Dock. Whenever you click it you'll get a new window on your current desktop. You need to have "Enable support for assistive devices" activated in System Preferences - Universal Access.

tell application "Terminal" to activate
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Terminal"
        click menu item "New Window" of menu "Shell" of menu bar 1
    end tell
end tell

Source: adapted from this hint regarding Safari.


Unable to resize/create partiion using gpt

gpt is a tool to edit the GUID partition table of a disk. It only modifies the
primary and secondary GPT header and table and the MBR. Or with other words: it only modifies the first 34 blocks and the last 33 blocks of a device. This means: if you add a partition starting at block 40 and ending at block 409640 (these are the boundaries of a typical OS X EFI partition) it doesn't write anything to the blocks 40-409640 but only to the GPT headers/tables.

Adding a partition doesn't result in a file system and far less in a readable file system. To create a file system you have to format the partition with an appropriate tool like newfs_hfs! After formatting a partition the file system is essentially empty except the necessary parts which "represent" the file system like catalog file, allocation file etc.

If you remove a partition with a file system or remove the whole partition table containing several formatted partitions with gpt remove|destroy ... the file system(s) won't be touched. So after restoring a partition or a partition table with the same values they had previously the file system(s) with all content will "reappear".

One (rare) case exists where a partition might be enlarged: if some unallocated disk space is directly "behind" a partition. If you first remove a partition with gpt and then re-add the partition with the same start block but a larger size the previous file system is completely in the boundaries of the new partition. But at least the allocation file (~volume bitmap) is corrupted and the alternative volume header is at the wrong location. Usually such an "intentionally corrupted" file system can be repaired with diskutil repairVolume .... You are highly discouraged though to use this method to enlarge a partition.

Modifying disk partitions with gpt like in your question or as described below will delete any current partition (and its content) with a high probability. To resize (expand or shrink) a current partition while keeping the content use diskutil!

Starting using an empty disk with a default GPT partition table you get the following partition scheme:

sh-3.2# gpt show /dev/disk1
        start         size  index  contents
            0            1         PMBR
            1            1         Pri GPT header
            2           32         Pri GPT table
           34  17179869117
  17179869151           32         Sec GPT table
  17179869183            1         Sec GPT header

Though newer disks report a logical block size of 512 Bytes they usually have a physical block size of 4096 Bytes.

1st rule: start blocks and partition sizes should be dividable by 8 to align partitions to physical blocks
2nd rule: you can't assign more blocks than available (the max. available number of blocks is: 17179869117 (and aligning to physical blocks: 2147483639 x 8 = 17179869112 blocks)
3rd rule: try to specify a GUID type

One viable option is:

gpt add -b 40 -i 1 -s 17179869112 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk1

Or you might add an EFI partition and leave some space at the end of the disk (as Apple does):

gpt add -b 40 -i 1 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B /dev/disk1
gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s 17179197368 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk1

After adding the partitions you have to format the main partition:

newfs_hfs -J -v "Name" /dev/disk1s1

or if you chose the second partition table (with EFI partition)

newfs_hfs -J -v "Name" /dev/disk1s2


This answers it partially.
When I encountered the same problem on El Capitan, these steps solved it.

Disable System Integrity Protection.
sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "delete:add-app" /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/com.apple.dockfixup.plist
sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "delete:add-doc" /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/com.apple.dockfixup.plist

Re-enable System Integrity Protection.

I referred to another discussion for PlistBuddy


Pyautogui not entering all characters when using typewrite function

With AppleScript I made this for use in Automator:

https://gist.github.com/SuperHofstad/f826985ec536ff2d650699cb37a7fadc

set appPass to "PASSWORD" as text

tell application "System Events"
    delay 0.5
    repeat until exists process "SecurityAgent"
        delay 0.5
    end repeat
    tell process "SecurityAgent"
        keystroke appPass
        key code 36
    end tell
end tell


Access macOS High Sierra from a Windows 10 machine using RDP?

Remote access over RDP is possible from macOS to Windows but not vice versa.

You can instead configure Screen Sharing from within Sharing preference pane under System Preferences app and connect to the Mac from Windows using one of the many VNC client apps.


Can I partially use iCloud with someone else's Apple ID without syncing contacts to my device?

Sure thing.

Go to the Apple logo in the top left corner > System Preferences > iCloud > Uncheck what you do not need or sign out all together if you want.

I recommend only checking off only what you do not need while keeping Find my Mac on. This way you can still track your MacBook Pro incase it goes missing.

On the other hand, if you choose to sign out from iCloud, your iTunes purchases, FaceTime, etc... will not be removed or affected.

Hope this helps.


Any need to verify disks after hard reboot?

OS X doesn't normally seem to repair drives or volumes after hard resets or kernel panics, or at least the verbose startup output looks the same, and you don't probably need to do that manually either.

In this case you could try verifying the drives or volumes (logical partitions) as troubleshooting steps though. Note that the Verify Disk button performs completely different operations depending on whether a drive or a volume is selected. HFS+ volumes that support live verification can be verified even when they are mounted as the root filesystem, but you have to start up from the recovery partition to repair them.

According to Apple KB article TS1417, running fsck is not usually necessary.


What will be changed if I install Configuration Profile on my iOS device?

Unless the web site is part of a registration to allow you to run a custom app, your hesitation might be well founded.

Configuration profiles are used for two main purposes:

To allow you to load applications that are not approved on the Apple App Store.
Restrict what you do on the phone just like parental controls can restrict a mac from doing certain things.

That profile contains a secure certificate that tells the iPhone to trust and run applications that are tagged by an enterprise developer for in-house development. This is really nice for companies to make a program that doesn't match what Apple wants to sell or provides more security than selling it to the general public. The second half can mean the enterprise can issue a remote wipe, enforce password lock restrictions, prevent you from installing apps, and many many more diverse settings. You can get documentation on these restrictions at the Apple Enterprise Site and by downloading the iPhone Configuration Utility for free and playing with it to create your own profiles. You have no way of knowing what's in the profile unless you download it to your computer and have a look using the Configuration Utility. You can make a profile that changes no settings and just allows special apps to load and run.

If you ever want to remove a profile and find it's locked you out, you can always restore your device in iTunes losing all the data and programs and the profile in one fell swoop.


Is there an Apple list of terminal based tweaks?

There is a pretty good database full of defaults write commands at http://secrets.blacktree.com/

They also have a PrefPane that allows you to use System Preferences to set these hidden preferences.

(This site is no longer available)

Still available here: https://hiddensettings.1984apps.com


I do not want my text messages to sync between two iPhones

Make sure you sign out of your iCloud or Apple ID on his phone. If he is receiving your texts in iMessage, this means that both phones are sharing the same iCloud account (or apple ID)


How to simulate 2-finger tap with keyboard modifier?

BetterTouchTool is a great app that can help you with this.

You can install this by going into their website and download or by installing it with homebrew cask here

Now just for an example, I've posted an image of something you could do with it


Why doesn't my new @me.com email address work?

You may just need to wait.

I transferred my MobileMe account to iCloud on iOS 5 launch day. I encountered the same issues that you seem to be having in that when I tried to use the mail app on iCloud.com it gave me same error message as you received. When I tried to turn mail and notes on in the iCloud system preferences, it just hanged on 'starting'. All other features were working correctly.

I just trumpet it up to high demand on Apple's servers and decided to wait. I just tried now and my email is working from both iCloud.com and mail.app.


When connecting to a Mac from a PC for file sharing, you should be able to use your full username that shows up on your login screen and the password associated with it. For example, when connecting from a PC to a Mac someone with the username "John Doe" would sign in using that as the username. They would use their password associated with that account as their password, but make sure that that account is enabled in System Preferences to support SMB file sharing, because if the account is not enabled, then you cannot log in. Here is a screenshot of what I mean:


Never heard of different version of PSE.

Although, Adobe says 4GB of disk space needed. The 1.5 Gig you might saw seems to correspond to the size of the installer.


iPod Classic Playlist To Shuffle Through Tracks I Want to Listen To?

You must have tracks where the Skip when Shuffling tag is set. Look for some of the tracks that won't play, then select on in iTunes, press Command-I, and look on the Options tab.

Podcasts have this set by default.


How do I connect to my web server on mac?

In Finder, choose Go > Connect To Server (command+K) and type in the URL or IP for the server (including the protocol if not afp).


How do I permanently show my dashboard on a separate monitor?

There isn't a built in function to do this. You have to look for an external tool, but i think there will be no such tool, though.


Why can't my MacBook Air (Late 2010) stay cool?

Obviously the cooling system on any computer needs to be free of dust and fluff for it to work effectively but you've checked that.

The next stage is to remove the radiator and heat-pipe assembly to check on the state of the thermal coupling between the CPU and heat-pipe. Clean off the old thermal paste and replace using a thin, even layer applied to the CPU. Apple have had a few issues over the years with hot-running CPUs caused by excessive thermal paste, so don't put too much on. The idea is simply to fill in imperfections between the CPU die and the heat-pipe that would otherwise be filled by air (air makes a better insulator than a conductor).

A cleaned and re-pasted cooler assembly should bring your temps back down again.


With the release of Mac OS 10.4, launchd was chosen to supersede cron in Mac OS. Here's a cached version of the launchd page from the Apple Developer Connection in 2005. It explains why cron was deprecated, as well as the benefits of launchd from Apple's perspective.

The summary: launchd was created to not just replace cron but also init, xinetd for better performance, and better control over configuration and the actual tasks themselves.

  The launchd daemon offers a single, standardized, interface to any and all programs started automatically by the system. Furthermore, the configuration files that determine when to run a given program can also specify resource limits and environment variables, which simplifies setup and security for many programs. The same configuration file format is used whether a job is launched once at system startup or user login, on demand over the network, or at intervals.


How to delay locking of my Mac when I am not using it

In Lion, there's a setting in System Preferences under Security & Privacy asking how long after sleep or the screen saver begins is the password required.


Laggy write/read performance w/ Samsung 850 evo 1TB on mid-2012 Macbook Pro 10.12.6 Sierra

I found the culprit as follows:

did a hardware test by holding 'd' key on startup
did extended system test (short one passed)
test kept on crashing when testing memory
switched both 8gb RAM sticks against new ones

Now the system works again as expected.


Removing dark borders from UI elements, including windows and buttons

You have turned on ‘Increase contrast’ in settings.
Open System Preferences, search for ‘contrast’ and unselect ‘Increase contrast’:


How to search for a file by a hash value with bash script (terminal)?

You can use the find command:

find / -type f -exec md5 {} \; | grep 0d882ff2d5edd7d045c1b57320d2e046793868f8

However, since you're running this on all files, it may be extremely slow — try limiting the search directory by replacing / with the path to a specific directory you want to search.


Updating to macOS Catalina gets stuck, when trying to update from OS X Mavericks

The jump from Mavericks to Catalina may be too much of a leap. Try first upgrading to High Sierra. The website How to upgrade to macOS High Sierra has a link you can use to download the High Sierra upgrade. I suggest this because the installation of High Sierra will also upgrade the firmware to recognize and boot from APFS containers. While this is not a requirement for High Sierra, it is for Catalina.


I'm not sure how this can happen all of a sudden, but I have a suggestion.
Launch System Preferences (fastest way is Apple Menu > System Preferences)
Click on Display
Click on the Color tab
Select Color LCD in the left column
If this does not reset the color, click the Calibrate... button on the left. This launches the Display Calibrator Assistant
At the step called Target White Point (see the current step name at the left of the window) make sure you select Native

Hope this helps


If your goal is to delete it just from the iPad, then remove the account in Settings > Mail, Contacts, & Calendars.

You can use the Edit button to select several messages and push the Delete/Archive button to affect everything that is selected.

If you have access to a desktop machine, removing everything from the server should be much faster.


How do text sizes compare between iPhone X, 8/Plus and SE?

Identical between pre-X devices; +17% with Zoomed-View; +7% on X

On SE, 8 and 8 Plus (and older devices of same form factor) text size is the same between devices, larger screen fits proportionally more text.

Zoomed View gives exactly the smaller-device amount of text in proportionally larger text size. 8 Plus screen is 17% larger than 8's, and SE is 17% larger than 8 (measured by screen height / width).

Conversely, on X the text is size in the middle of Standard-View and Zoomed-View of earlier devices, roughly:

7% larger than on 8 (proportional to how X screen is wider than 8)
9.5% smaller than on 8 Plus in Zoomed-View (proportional to how 8 Plus screen is wider than X)

DPI has no effect to text size on the apps I tried, no matter whether or not they support DynamicType system setting.

Notes:

%% diffs are between width of equal text in equal apps, with identical settings
screen width diffs are based on official specs: screen size in pixels divided by PPI
measured and researched on my own; I would appreciate link to an authoritative source or suggestions on better metrics


I want to downgrade from Yosemite 10.10 to Mavericks or previous operating system

If you have a recent Time Machine backup from before you upgraded, you can restore the backup and you will be back on Mavericks. You will lose any new files, changes, etc. that have been made since you upgraded to Yosemite, unless you back these up before you attempt to downgrade.
Follow these steps, from OS X Daily:

Reboot the Mac with Yosemite and hold down Command+R to enter Recovery mode (You can also hold Option and choose “Recovery HD”, or if you have a Yosemite USB installer key, you can boot from that too)

At the OS X Utilities menu, choose “Restore From Time Machine Backup”

Connect the Time Machine drive that contains the most recent Mavericks backup to the Mac (typically through USB or Thunderbolt), then click “Continue”

At the “Select a Backup Source” screen, choose the Time Machine volume used for the Mavericks backup and click Continue

Under “Backup Date & Time”, select the most recent backup made from OS X Mavericks – double-check the OS X Version menu to make sure it’s “10.9.5” (or whatever 10.9.x you had previously), then click Continue again

Choose the Destination drive (the Yosemite volume you want to downgrade) to restore the OS X Mavericks backup to – this will erase OS X Yosemite and revert back to Mavericks on that drive, be sure you backed up all files created between the most recent backup date and now or you will lose them – click on “Restore” to begin the downgrade process

...
The downgrade process can take quite a while depending on the size of the backup, the amount of files on the drive, the speed of the Mac, and the speed of the hard drive. Expect this process to take several hours if not many hours, for a very large hard drive of stuff, it could easily take overnight if not a full day to complete hundreds of GB of file transfers. Do not interrupt the restore process, otherwise you would need to start over.


Create Wireless Bridge Connection Between Modem & WNDR3700 Router

Nothing is going wrong, this is expected behavior.  You are disconnecting the path used by the router to connect to the modem.  The short answer is, you can not do this this way.  The router needs to be physically connected to the modem if the modem is bridging.

The long answer includes explanations that have to do with the Data Link Layer versus the Networking layer and using the router as a wired to wireless bridge...

If the modem has built in wireless capability you could turn everything on in it.  I do not know if your router will act as a wired to wireless bridge (backwards from the usual).  This would require special configuration that is not what is usually expected.


Use the Fingerspoo iPad wallpaper and you won't notice fingerprints anymore.


I have been having the same issue on Mojave 10.14.6 with trying to update apps from the App Store, with installs of new apps (including if you delete an app you're having trouble updating, then just install it again) working fine.
For reference of others reading this, most of my Apps (certainly the ones affected) are just in /Applications so that's not part of the cause.
Probable Cause
Searching around, I found that the community has identified an issue:
https://mrmacintosh.com/mojave-2020-005-security-update-causing-major-problems-updated/
The TLDR version is that:

if you installed Safari 14
then the most recent Security Update

in that order (Safari 14 first), then you tend to encounter the issue; if you installed the Security Update first, then Safari 14, you're likely to be ok.
Checking if you're affected
The last part of the TLDR is that you can check if you're encountering the same issue by running the following in the Terminal:
softwareupdate -l
If you are, you'll see the following output:
objc[5711]: Class AMSupportURLConnectionDelegate is implemented in both /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/EmbeddedOSInstall.framework/Versions/A/EmbeddedOSInstall (0x108f37c58) and /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/OSPersonalization.framework/Versions/A/OSPersonalization (0x108d9a358). One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.

So what do I do now?
It seems Apple has pulled the updates, so we can hope there will be some fix and revised update for everyone who hasn't installed the updates yet soon .
The current solutions (detailed on the above link), other than waiting, are that you can do a full re-install of macOS 10.14.6 - over the top, and then go from there.
Installing Catalina is another option, though that may not solve all issues, especially as the latest Catalina patch is also causing issues for some: https://mrmacintosh.com/catalina-10-15-7-update-accountsd-using-400-if-using-icloud-mail/
I'd read and keep an eye on the above link as it gets updated with latest best practice ways to resolve this, and when Apple release an update that resolves things - though it's probably best to wait and see the reaction to that, when it does appear.
Hope this helps!
UPDATE: (1st Oct 2020 13:39 UTC)
Just tried again offhand and now all the updates installed. I recall some server-backend issue like this before a few months ago.
Still doesn't get around the other issues mentioned in the above link, but at least app-updates now install.
Also, thanks to @bmike for the link below in the comments and his separate reply - anyone in future coming here, please check those out.
UPDATE: (2nd Oct 2020 10:11 UTC)
...And the problem is back. Today updates again won't install.
I guess just going to play the waiting game for a bit longer and see what happens.


can't boot into windows 10 bootcamp but partition is still good

OK, since I can read the bootcamp partition, I guess I'll just back it up and reinstall Windows. I'll first have to manually delete the bootcamp partition and resize the MacOS partition manually, since Bootcamp assistant doesn't know what to do now (fairly useless app, in my opinion!).

Thanks for everyone's input.


It seems I was being too impatient. After a while, a "(Remove)" link showed up when I expanded the device details on https://me.com/find/


What external DVD drive should I use my MBP's internal drive is broken?

I've never heard of an external drive that wouldn't work.


iOS development on windows without any apple device?

You need Xcode to build, sign and upload your app; it also is advisable to test it on real hardware (aka an iPhone) before releasing it. Xcode is only available for macOS though so you need at least a small Mac mini for this (which is more than enough for smaller apps)


What is the type of VPN created in Sharing?

I am 99.9% sure that the choice is Door #3 (Door #4 is the other).


"no bootable device" - insert boot disk and press any key

If you can get Lion to boot you can go to the Startup Disk in System Preferences and select the internal disk. Maybe it in Recovery Mode if it won’t boot.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202796
Basically does this under the hood.
To bless a volume with only macOS or Darwin, and create the BootX and boot.efi files as needed:
bless --folder "/Volumes/Mac OS X/System/Library/CoreServices" --bootinfo --bootefi


What's  > About This Mac > System Report > Software > Applications for?

On mine MacBook Pro running Mojave 10.14.3 it just shows all the .apps on my computer.


iPhone 6: Unable to find service and only displays "Searching"

I would try to put the phone in airport mode then back to normal and see if that helps.  Next try to reset network connections under general and reset then reset network connections.  you can also try toggling cellular data on/off and/or roaming voice data&data and data roaming on/off.


AppleScript quicktime to record iPhone screen

Is it possible? Maybe. First I tried:

 tell application "QuickTime Player"
    set current camera to video recording device named "My Name's iPhone"
    end tell

and I got an error that the current camera could not be set to that. I also tried to set it back to "FaceTime HD Camera" and QuickTime Player did not like that either.

Next I tried:

tell application "QuickTime Player"
    set theRecording to new movie recording
    set theDocument to its document "Movie Recording"
    tell theDocument
        set current camera to video recording device named "FaceTime HD Camera"
        start
    end tell
end tell

But still got an error when trying to set the current camera property.

So the closest I could come was to set the camera and audio manually, and QuickTime Player should remember those settings. So then you can just use this script to start the recording. Although to be honest, it doesn't really do what couldn't be done with the same amount of button clicks in QuickTime Player itself!

tell application "QuickTime Player"
    set theRecording to new movie recording
    set theDocument to its document "Movie Recording"
    tell theDocument
        start
    end tell
end tell

That does not completely answer your question, since I could not set the video and audio sources for the new movie. The AppleScript dictionary for QuickTime Player that the "current camera" property of the document "new recording" should be able to be set by AppleScript. So possibly someone smarter than me can figure out how to set it.


Sliding up the menu from the bottom of the screen gives you access to the currently playing music app (as well as to things like the Flashlight or Airplane mode toggle).

Touch the name of the song playing and it will take you to the app playing the song.


waking up from locked screen with just keyboard

On 10.9.5 You could use the Accessibility option and enable mouse keys  if you have a keyboard number pad.

There are some optional settings there to choose from like:

By clicking 5 times on the Option key you can turn that feature on or off.


I face the same problem and after some research, I figured out that apparently this feature only implemented in iBooks for ebooks and not for pdfs (also still in iOS11). Hence, I switched to the foxit reader app, which is very convenient to handle.


Is there a simple way of finding the font used in a piece of copied text?

Since you don't tell us which program you are copying from it will be difficult to give you a definitive answer, however...

In my tests with a PDF of my own creation preview.app does not seem to show font info in the info panel. However (the free) Adobe reader will show what fonts are used in the document if you go to File > Properties and select the Fonts tab.

That will show you what fonts are used in the document but not what font is at a specific point in the document.

There are web sites which purport to tell you what font is used from a picture (or screen shot) of the font in question. I remember trying this out a year or so ago with mixed results, but it might be worth searching for online.


Running a Windows VM from external flash drive

Running the VM from a USB drive is definitely possible, but far from optimal.

I use VM for running Project and Visio on my mac (never from USB though), and it made a huge difference when I switched to SSD.

Some numbers: A decent internal SSD will have a speed (sequential read/write) of around 500 MB/s while a fast external SSD will do around 300 MB/s, and a top notch USB 3.0 drive will be around 140 MB/s (a lot USB 3.0 drives are bellow 20 MB/s)  - Source: SSD Benchmarks, USB Benchmarks

To put this into perspective, a top notch usb drive should perform nearly as well as an old hard disk drive, so it's definitely viable. But it will only be half as fast as a good external SSD drive and 1/3 as fast as your internal drive.

This makes a huge difference when running VMs. Keep in mind the bottleneck here is the actual read/write operations on the drive, since the USB/Thunderbolt bandwidth allows for much greater speeds.

Whatever you chose, make sure you're getting a fast performance unit, since speed is very important for VMs. I really recommend making sure you get a Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 drive.


Sounds like you have mixed up your Contrast settings. You can increased in System Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Enable Increase contrast. Make sure to set the display contrast slider to Normal.


When my external display is on, my Mac thinks it's off. When it's off, on

Restart you Mac and try resetting the PRAM:

Hold down the ⌘+⌥+R+P keys until you hear the start up chime two times.


Can I factory reset my jailbroken device without upgrading the iOS version?

Yes, use Cydia Impactor. It is available in the Telesphoreo repository (of Cydia), in the Utilities category.


After a ton of trial and error, I finally got this working. I don't know what the heck the issue was, but it was a total mess. At one point, I was somehow getting reminders for events in Notification Center even though they weren't appearing on my calendar.

Anyway, I had to:

Turn off ALL calendar syncing, including for other accounts (iCloud, Facebook, etc.)
Completely delete the problematic account from System Preferences > Internet Accounts
Completely delete the contents of ~/Library/Calendars**
Log out and back in

Then I set up the problematic account again from scratch (in System Preferences > Internet Accounts) and enabled calendar syncing. This time, it worked like normal, and then I was able to reenable calendar syncing for all my other accounts.

I didn't have to change any settings or anything on Google's end (google.com/calendar).

** Note: I was only able to do this because I don't store any calendars locally. If you have local calendars, deleting the contents of this folder will delete all those events. Just a warning!


Is it possible to program an iOS app using an iPad?

Yes and no, but mainly no. Let me explain.

You can't use an iPad (at least not yet) to go through the entire process (i.e. design, test, and submit your app). You also can't use Xcode on an iPad (at least not directly, although you could do this remotely - but that is not a practical solution).

People can and do use iPads for:

learning how to code
editing code using various editors (but not Xcode)
designing some of the other resources/assets used in apps (e.g. images, icons, sounds, etc)

However, most development is done using an integrated development environment (IDE) such as Xcode. Most apps for iOS (and macOS, tvOS, and watchOS) are programmed and submitted via Xcode, although there are alternatives.


How to find the location of an opened file

In most apps you can Command-Click or Right-Click on the document's icon in the title bar of the app and it will display a drop down menu with the full path. You can select a folder from the drop down to open it in the Finder.


OS X and macOS can't format partitions as NTFS or write to NTFS without third-party software (read is built in).  Both Windows and Mac support read/write to FAT and you can erase a disk and set the format to FAT in Disk Utility which can be read in Windows. If Windows cannot read the FAT volume then this is a separate problem with the disk or Windows as it should work.


Bash shell script to locate and remove substring within a filename

With bash only:

for filename in *; do
    if [[ "$filename" =~ (.*S[0-9][0-9]E[0-9][0-9]).*(\....)$ ]]; then
        echo mv "$filename" "${BASH_REMATCH[1]}${BASH_REMATCH[2]}"
    fi
done

Remove the "echo" when you're satisfied it's working.


Sometimes symbolic links may not be suitable for your needs.

In that cases you can use bindfs - a FUSE filesystem for mounting a directory to another location.

Install it with homebrew:

brew install bindfs

And then bind one folder to another:

bindfs /Volumes/Data/ContentA ~/ContentA


There is not a GO button in the menu bar

Start Finder: then the menu bar reads:
Finder File Edit View GO Window Help.
It is a Finder menu not Safari menu that has GO.


How can I increase brightness on Mac without Mac keyboard

key: "scroll lock" to decrease brightness
key: "pause" to increase brightness


How can I run Windows applications on a MacBook Pro?

You have three choices. They all come with pros and cons

Run a Virtual Machine

You have VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop in the commercial space to chose from when it comes to virtualization software. And if you're comfortable tweaking and fiddling you can use VirtualBox for free.

Pros:

Near native speeds for your applications
Your OS X-based data can be accessed from your Windows programs
Can pick between running them in a full Windows desktop-in-a-Window or in integrated mode where the Window apps appear as windowed apps right in your OS X desktop
Decent support in the commercial offerings at least for graphics acceleration so you can run some graphics intensive programs
You get a bunch of neat things with virtual machines including the ability to pause applications mid-run and snapshot the state of your virtual machine

Cons:

You have to buy a copy of the Windows operating system
The Windows OS installation will take up a lot of space on your hard drive, plus the Windows application space
If your Mac is older, doesn't have much RAM, the VM approach can drag down your system a bit but most, if not all, new Macs can handle VM hosting duties without much of any issue

Run Wine

Wine is a translation layer for Windows applications. It's a bit like a virtual machine but doesn't require the Windows OS. It sits between the Windows application and OS X and makes the application think it's running on Windows by translating all the Windows calls its making to OS X calls.

There are two choices of know of here. The free WineBottler and the paid-for CrossOver Mac from CodeWeavers.

Some commercial software is delivered for OS X this way -- I know The Sims 3 game that my wife likes to play on her MacBook Pro is actually the Windows version of the game running under the Wine emulator.

Pros:

You don't need to buy a copy of Windows
Your OS X-based data can be accessed from your Window programs

Cons:

Application support under Wine can be hit-and-miss. Some apps work well, some don't. Check at http://appdb.winehq.org/ to see if your applications are on the list of tested, supported applications if you're going to try WineBottler. CodeWeavers keeps their own list.
Because the Windows applications think they're running on Windows, and not everything Windows does translates perfectly to OS X, some applications can behave erratically.

Run Windows Native with BootCamp

Windows can actually be installed your Apple hardware directly and usually runs just fine. Apple even provides a utility called BootCamp that lets you keep a Windows and OS X installation available to your Mac and pick which OS to boot in to when you start up your machine.

Pros:

That's the fastest you can get for Windows apps on Apple hardware. It's the OS running on bare metal. If you need every last little bit of performance for your applications, this will be your best bet.
Your Windows partition stays separate from your OS X partition so changes to one rarely impact the other

Cons:

You have to buy a copy of the Windows operating system
Moving data between the Windows side to the OS X side is hard and in some cases impossible, for the most part the OS'es and their programs are completely silo'ed


How do I convert a pages document to a word document without access to pages?

Pages is free, so go get it if you can.

In addition to the iOS and macOS pages app, the iCloud version of Pages enable anyone on Linux, Windows and Mac to use a modern browser and edit/convert pages documents without needing local software.

This beta started rolling out to people that had brand new iCloud accounts in late July at https://beta.icloud.com and now Apple is slowly rolling out the beta to anyone that logs in to https://www.icloud.com

The actual web apps are the same whether you enter through the beta URL or the normal URL and the only difference between the two is the treatment of the rest of the iCloud icons. The www url has linen and iOS 6 styling and the beta URL has iOS 7 styling without needing Mavericks or iOS 7.


External hard drive seems to block applications randomly

It might be the Spotlight indexing. Do you see mdworker active in Activity Monitor when this happens? If you have not done this yet, you might try excluding the drive in the Spotlight Privacy settings in System Preferences and see if that helps.


How to run apple and custom git side-by-side

I've talked about modifying system tools before and the short of it is: don't do it! Things will use the system tools expecting a certain version of a certain tool and if you change that you could break many things.

Instead, change your path. For example, if your git is located at /usr/local/git/bin/git, add the following to your ~/.bash_profile or equivalent:

export PATH=/usr/local/git/bin:$PATH

This way, you can use your git by running git but the system git will remain available.


Can you use Apple Care+ without any checks (bringing just MacBook)?

Yes, they confirm AppleCare status in their system, and you don’t need to provide anything else.

At least, that has been my experience.


How to prevent Spotlight from playing YouTube videos when I paste a YouTube URL into Spotlight

With macOS 10.15 Catalina, as a workaround, you can first type a character and then paste the URL to fool Spotlight and prevent it from displaying a Quick Look preview. After editing the URL, you just need to pay attention not to copy that first character.
With macOS 11 Big Sur, none of that is necessary, as Spotlight no longer displays a preview:


You need to key down followed by key up:

tell application "System Events"
    key down shift
    key up shift
    key down shift
    key up shift
end tell


How can I find out the IO throughput of an external storage device connected to a MBP?

A nice leightweight monitoring tool is bwm-ng (installed with brew):

It shows network as well as disk activity:

$: bwm-ng -i ioservice
  bwm-ng v0.6.2 (probing every 0.500s), press 'h' for help
  input: ioservice disk IO type: rate
  /         iface                   Rx                   Tx                Total
  ==============================================================================
            disk0:        4063.49 KB/s            0.00 KB/s         4063.49 KB/s
            disk1:           0.00 KB/s         2579.36 KB/s         2579.36 KB/s
            disk2:        4063.49 KB/s            0.00 KB/s         4063.49 KB/s
            disk3:           0.00 KB/s         4000.00 KB/s         4000.00 KB/s
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            total:        8143.14 KB/s         6584.49 KB/s        14727.63 KB/s

The example displayed is disk activity related to the command sudo asr ... (cloning an APFS disk0s2/disk2 to disk1s2/disk3).


brew Install encounter error /usr/local/share/texinfo is not writable

Try running the command:

sudo chown -R `whoami`:admin /usr/local/share/texinfo

and reattempting the installation.


Audacity (as of v2.4.1) is not looking for libavutil.*.dylib, it needs ffmpeg.*.dylib. That is not installed by homebrew.
You will need to download ffmpeg.*.dylib by following the instructions at https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/installing_ffmpeg_for_mac.html
It should automatically install the ffmpeg library and configure the Audacity Preferences > Library to:
/Library/Application Support/audacity/libs/ffmpeg.55.64bit.dylib
Then you will be able to import m4a audio files.


how to have the same gradient fill background on all slides

1) You have to edit a "Master Slide" (menu: View -> Show Master Slides).

2) Then Edit the master slide (you can duplicate it if you don't want to touch the original).

3) This automatically applies to all the slides.

See how the Slide 1 has now a gradient, even tho I have modified a Master Slide.

Play around (and Google) Master Slides in Keynote and you will likely understand how it works.


This is probably far too broad to provide a practical answer, but here's an outline of how you'll need to reason about automating OS X.

Try to pick an app that is built for automation: https://www.macosxautomation.com

If you can leverage that interface, you'll be very much closer to a solution. If not, there are three more general purpose methods to control OS X:

command line scripting - so you'd need to have the arduino ssh in to the Mac OS as a legitimate networked device just as you could ssh in to OS X from ubuntu, Windows, iOS or any other OS. Once your arduino can open a network connection to OS X - you can use AppleScript, JavaScript, bash, swift and many other languages to send messages to iTunes or other scriptable apps.
USB interface - Apple designs the OS to be accessible to foot switches, screen readers, breath control, joysticks. If you were savvy enough to program your arduino to emulate an assistive device then you could go to the Accessibility system preference pane and then allow your arduino to control the mouse, the keyboard, etc...
voice control. The macOS changes would let you start work on your arduino to synthesize a voice and then connect the voice synthesizer to your sound input (or just use a microphone) to speak to the OS. http://www.practicalarduino.com/projects/speech-synthesizer

Again - these might be a large project for anyone that has no background, so you will want to focus on automating your OS X automation first. Once you can play/pause things on OS X to OS X - then you can see if you can replicate those things from arduino.

If you wanted to have the arduino send serial commands to a program on the Mac - you'd need to first learn to program how to process serial input and then you'd need to learn how to have that program script one of the above methods. Again - you'll need to focus on small achievable steps and then build on them to make a system.


Detaching Process from "Run Script Over SSH" in Shortcuts

Try using tmux it'll keep sessions alive after you leave.


Scripting the unhiding of Library folders on Time Machine disks

Could you use something like this?

sudo /System/Library/Extensions/TMSafetyNet.kext/Helpers/bypass chflags nohidden /Volumes/*/Backups.backupdb/*/*/*/Users/*/Library/

bypass was in /System/Library/Extensions/TMSafetyNet.kext/Contents/MacOS/bypass on Lion.


Restore previous-released OS version(mojave) from catalina public beta

Unlike some installations of some operating systems there is no OS level uninstall feature in macOS.

That is true for applications, though some do have uninstallers available.
That is true for minor OS version upgrades, EG 10.14.1 to 10.14.2
That is especially true for full versions, EG 10.14 to 10.15

What that means is that if you install an OS update or upgrade and you need to revert back to the previous version there is no built-in way to do so.

In fact the ONLY way to revert  any OS upgrade is to back up your files, boot into recovery mode (or a bootable USB installer), wipe the drive and re-install the operating system. Once that is done you can restore from your backup.


2011 MacBook Pro monitor as a 2nd display for Windows 7 (Display port) laptop

iMac's support what is known as Target Display Mode. However, this is limited to iMac's only, Macbook Pro laptops do not support this.

Alternatively, you can use your Macbook Pro as a secondary monitor by using an app such as Air Display.

Air Display is an app that will allow another shared desktop to display on it, over wifi.  However, if you are doing any critical photo, video or even games, you will find the lag to be very annoying.


iPhoto Problem with colored spinning wheel

You could try leaving it for a while and see if it recovers on its own, but it probably will not. Unfortunately if an application is in that state, there's usually nothing that can be done. I don't know if iPhoto has auto-saving but I don't think it does.

You don't need to restart your computer to fix it, though. Click on the Apple menu then select Force Quit. Click on iPhoto and click Force Quit. You can then restart iPhoto and see if any of your work reappears.


When I delete "Watch Me Do" from Automator, does it get deleted forever?

If you are referring to the changes you made being deleted (i.e., the stuff it watched you do), I expect it is permanently deleted.

The action itself (in the source list) oughtn't ever be deleted.


iOS Clips app: What is the difference between Save Video and Save to files on iPad?

"Save Videos" saves the video to the Photos image & video library.

"Save to files" means to save the video as a file to for example iCloud Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, local storage or other storage service!


Because SSH credentials should never be group- or world-readable.  The fact that the server(s) you administer are incorrectly configured and do not enforce this is not a good thing.


Location of blocked numbers within iTunes backup

I looked into your question, and I think it might not be possible to find blocked numbers within a backup (or at least not in a recognizable form). I know that it is possible to find these numbers if you have messages synced with iCloud. Through the messages app on a Mac, you can go to preferences (⌘ + ,), and from there view any blocked numbers that are synced.

I am still looking through finding the blocked numbers in the backups myself, but I am unsure that I will find them there. If I come across more I will edit the answer further.

I hope this helps and best of luck of finding the blocked numbers through that backup.

(I am new to StackExchange, so I appreciate any feedback that would help me improve my answers or how/when I answer)


Open terminal and type:

sudo mdutil -E /

You will be asked for your password, provide it, as this command
requires administrator privileges to run.
After confirming your Spotlight index will be re-built and your files
should appear in the search. ( Depending on the size of your HDD it
can take a while )

To turn Spotlight on/off use:

sudo mdutil -i on /
sudo mdutil -i off /

To fine tune your Spotlight settings open System Preferences > Spotlight

Exclude certain folders from getting indexed:


Cant delete Time Machine .inProgress file

I've been through this one and as I recall patience is a virtue, the length of time is linked to the size of the file. I wouldn't recommend forcing it.


A friend of mine recently upgraded his MacBook5,1 (2009 core 2 duo) with 2GB to Mavericks. It wasn't the most pleasant thing, but it actually didn't work out too bad for him and he even thinks there was a slight performance increase (I'm assuming due to the memory compression stuff being a touch faster than swap). I'm assuming that Yosemite isn't going to be much more stressful than Mavericks, so you can probably get away with it.

That being said, 2GB is absolutely too little these days if you're going to run more than one application. You are going to get beach balls, but perhaps slightly less than what you did with Mountain Lion. Again, I'm assuming this because of the memory compression introduced in Mavericks works faster than swapping to disk and with that little RAM you will be swapping out (or compressing) pages.


"The document could not be saved" - Preview error

I was facing the same issue, I finally got the issue resolved by following steps:

Go to File
Click option 'Export as pdf'
Save the file name with pdf extension (like 'file_name.pdf')

This worked for me, so give it a try.


Terminal loop command to change created date for all files in a large directory

I took a stab at writing a script that I think should work for you. You mentioned that you are not too experienced with terminal, so to use it, do the following:

cd into the root of your Movies folder
Create an open a new file (can be named anything, I used change-date) using touch change-date; open -e change-date. This will open a new file in TextEdit.
Copy paste the script below into the open file.
Make the script executable by running chmod +x change-date
Run the script using ./change-date
(Optional) Delete the script using rm change-date

You can replace all instances of touch with echo touch if you would like to test what the script will do. This will cause it to print all of the touch commands it will run, so you can look through the output and make sure it looks correct before removing the echo commands.

#!/usr/bin/env zsh

# recursively loop through all directories in the current directory (should be Movies)
for dir in **/*(/); do
    # use a regex with sed to set $year to whatever is between [ and ] if it is a series of 4 digits
    # if there aren't brackets, or the contents inside the brackets aren't 4 digits, year will be an empty string
    year=$(echo $dir | sed -En "s/.*\[([0-9]{4})\]/\1/p")

    # if the length of year is 4 characters long
    if [[ ${#year} -eq 4 ]] then
        # set the modification time of $dir to Jan 1 of $year
        touch -t "$year"01010000.00 $dir

        # loop through all files in $dir
        for file in $dir/*(.); do
            # set the modification time of $file to Jan 1 of $year
            touch -t "$year"01010000.00 $file
        done
    fi
done

I'm not the most experienced at writing my own shell scripts, but this seemed to work for me. If someone with more experience would like to correct an inefficiency or some other mistake, please feel free.

Before running this script, my directory looked like this:

$ tree -D
Movies
├── [Jan 10 00:22]  12\ Angry\ Men\ [1957]
│   └── [Jan 10 00:22]  12\ Angry\ Men\ [1957].avi
├── [Jan 10 00:22]  12\ Years\ a\ Slave\ [2013]
│   └── [Jan 10 00:22]  12\ Years\ a\ Slave\ [2013].avi
├── [Jan 10 00:22]  13\ Sins\ [2014]
│   └── [Jan 10 00:22]  13\ Sins\ [2014].mkv
├── [Jan 10 00:22]  2\ Guns\ [2013]
│   └── [Jan 10 00:22]  2\ Guns\ [2013].mp4
├── [Jan 10 00:22]  2001\ A\ Space\ Odyssey\ [1968]
│   ├── [Jan 10 00:22]  2001\ A\ Space\ Odyssey\ [1968].mp4
│   └── [Jan 10 00:22]  2001\ A\ Space\ Odyssey\ [1968].srt
├── [Jan 10 00:22]  2012\ [2009]
│   └── [Jan 10 00:22]  2012\ [2009].avi
├── [Jan 10 00:22]  21\ Jump\ Street\ [ALL]
│   ├── [Jan 10 00:22]  21\ Jump\ Street\ [2012]
│   │   └── [Jan 10 00:22]  21\ Jump\ Street\ [2012].mp4
│   └── [Jan 10 00:22]  22\ Jump\ Street\ [2014]
│       └── [Jan 10 00:22]  22\ Jump\ Street\ [2014].mp4
├── [Jan 10 00:22]  28\ Days\ Later\ [ALL]
│   ├── [Jan 10 00:22]  28\ Days\ Later\ [2002]
│   │   └── [Jan 10 00:22]  28\ Days\ Later\ [2002].mp4
│   └── [Jan 10 00:22]  28\ Weeks\ Later\ [2007]
│       └── [Jan 10 00:22]  28\ Weeks\ Later\ [2007].divx

And after running, it looked like this:

$ tree -D
Movies
├── [Jan  1  1957]  12\ Angry\ Men\ [1957]
│   └── [Jan  1  1957]  12\ Angry\ Men\ [1957].avi
├── [Jan  1  2013]  12\ Years\ a\ Slave\ [2013]
│   └── [Jan  1  2013]  12\ Years\ a\ Slave\ [2013].avi
├── [Jan  1  2014]  13\ Sins\ [2014]
│   └── [Jan  1  2014]  13\ Sins\ [2014].mkv
├── [Jan  1  2013]  2\ Guns\ [2013]
│   └── [Jan  1  2013]  2\ Guns\ [2013].mp4
├── [Jan  1  1968]  2001\ A\ Space\ Odyssey\ [1968]
│   ├── [Jan  1  1968]  2001\ A\ Space\ Odyssey\ [1968].mp4
│   └── [Jan  1  1968]  2001\ A\ Space\ Odyssey\ [1968].srt
├── [Jan  1  2009]  2012\ [2009]
│   └── [Jan  1  2009]  2012\ [2009].avi
├── [Jan 10 00:22]  21\ Jump\ Street\ [ALL]
│   ├── [Jan  1  2012]  21\ Jump\ Street\ [2012]
│   │   └── [Jan  1  2012]  21\ Jump\ Street\ [2012].mp4
│   └── [Jan  1  2014]  22\ Jump\ Street\ [2014]
│       └── [Jan  1  2014]  22\ Jump\ Street\ [2014].mp4
├── [Jan 10 00:22]  28\ Days\ Later\ [ALL]
│   ├── [Jan  1  2002]  28\ Days\ Later\ [2002]
│   │   └── [Jan  1  2002]  28\ Days\ Later\ [2002].mp4
│   └── [Jan  1  2007]  28\ Weeks\ Later\ [2007]
│       └── [Jan  1  2007]  28\ Weeks\ Later\ [2007].divx

EDIT ---

To get this answer to work correctly on an external ExFAT drive, a HFS+ disk image had to be created to give the correct permissions. The disk image was created on the external drive and the script was run from that disk image successfully


Why is my mac sharing the macintosh disk, and home folder?

You can remove all the default shares easily from the system preferences. Search for sharing and then configure (by selecting and then pressing the - ) to remove each share you don’t want to be active.

Then you can leave sharing on and just add the specific shares you want.

Here is an article with a picture showing what you would select and then use the + - control below the shared folder to remove that specific share.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204445

If you granted more permissions editing the config file and didn’t save a backup copy, you can recover an unmodified  version of that from back up or from the installer / recovery HD as well.


How to disable App Limits on macOS admin account, without passcode?

If you've forgotten your admin password, then you can reset it using the steps shown in this Apple document.