Suggestions for Multiple 24" LED Cinema Displays and MacBook Pro

I've looked into this in the past, and from what I know, you have a few options:

I'd never really recommend it, you can get a usb adaptor that essentially adds another display port to your computer.  Make sure the one you pick is Mac compatible - there are some that exist.
DualHead2Go is an interesting product that emulates a single double-wide monitor to your computer.  There are some catches:

There is a maximum resolution the device supports
It works best if the monitors are the same dimensions and resolution
It's currently ~$230
The computer doesn't see the monitors separately, which means that when you configure/use it, it will act accordingly.  If you put the menubar on the external 'monitor,' it will stretch across both; maximized windows will be two monitors wide etc.

I can't find anything to back it up at the moment, but at one point I do believe I saw an ExpressPort/34 video card or a breakout box for a PCI card.  The only thing I can find now is XGP, but I'm near certain I saw a Mac-specific solution at one point.

Each has its benefits and drawbacks.  If you're not on a tight budget and your monitors will work for it, I'd recommend the DualHead2Go.


iOS location based reminders not working accurately

When you get to the view where you can see the map and have selected When I Leave you can pinch and zoom to set the radius of where the notification will be triggered.


How can I make a file un-hidden permanently?

In Terminal defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE, relaunch  Finder. After that you'll see all your hidden files in Finder.

Now type

chflags nohidden

into Terminal and just drag&drop file that you want to unhide on the line. Enter.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE will reverse Finder back to normal.


Removing the ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.dt.Xcode.savedState/directory might help as well.


The Trim Enabler patches the following Kext-File

/System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage

which checks if the ssd is a 3rd-party or Apple Branded SSD:

you can also enable trim manually by looking for all 'Apple' occurrences in the file and patching them in a hex-editor or via terminal:

##1. Backup old file
    $sudo cp /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage
/System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage.original

##2. Patch the file to enable TRIM support
    $sudo perl -pi -e 's|(\x52\x6F\x74\x61\x74\x69\x6F\x6E\x61\x6C\x00{1,20})[^\x00]{9}(\x00{1,20}\x51)|$1\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00$2|sg' /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage

##3. Clear the system kernel extension cache

   $sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel

   $sudo kextcache -system-caches


This works for me:
log stream --predicate  '(process == "smtpd") || (process == "smtp")' --info

Explanation:
--predicate is used to filter the log. In this case it looks for the process "smtpd" or "smtp"
--info shows all messages down to info level, which is good for most purposes.
Hope this helps!


Migrate from El Capitan (10.11) to Catalina (10.15)

I ended up not migrating the whole machine. Since Catalina supports only 64-bit apps, it makes more sense to re-install one by one. Since most of my files (data) are synced online, no need to move them over either: I can find them back using a cloud storage solution (iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive or pCloud).

The most important thing I needed to migrate over though that was not synced online was my mail archive: multiple mailboxes sitting on the machine itself (i.e. not on any active account such as Exchange or Gmail). The solution for this turned out to be simple:

1) El Capitan was cloned on an external harddrive
2) External HD was connected to the new machine running Catalina
3) On Catalina, within the Mail App > Import Mailboxes... > choose “Apple Mail” continue > navigate to the external HD and find user/library/mail
4) Import

To improve management of archived email, I’d recommend using a third-party software such as MailSteward or EagleFiler.


Yahoo Mail on iPhone won't let me delete email

Make sure that you are signed in. Sometimes you get disconnected and the auth mechanism doesn't re-authenticate you. (IMAP auth) *assuming you are using the Mail.app)

Worst case, you can delete your yahoo mail setup and re-configure it.


keyboard shortcut in google docs is same as safari

Unfortunately, ⌘Cmd, is almost universally the default keyboard shortcut in Mac apps for Preferences.

As I could not find any simple way of reassigning or customizing keyboard shortcuts for Google Docs, the best workaround is to override the system shortcut for Preferences instead, to avoid the conflict.    Thankfully this can be done easily in OS X:

Open System Preferences, and then the Keyboard pane
Select the Shortcuts tab. Click "App Shortcuts" on the left pane. Then, click the little "+" below the right pane to enter our own custom
shortcut.
From the Application dropdown, choose Safari. (Or you can
leave it as All Applications if you prefer to do a system-wide
change).
For Menu Title, type Preferences... exactly, including the 3 dots.
Choose a different keyboard shortcut, preferably something not used by Google Docs. Perhaps ⌘CmdAlt,?

Once you've added the new shortcut for Preferences, you can use ⌘Cmd, for formatting subscripts in Google Docs!


When are per-user temp files in /var/folders/ removed?

It depends on the type of files created:
For files that the application has created as temporary files, they're up for removal when they have not been accessed for 3 days.
For files that the application has created as cache files, they're not normally automatically removed. Instead they can be removed when performing a safe boot (hold down the shift key while booting your Mac).
And no, as long as the application keeps the create file open (i.e. it has a reference to the file descriptor), it should never be the case that the  file is removed from the file system before the application quits.
Note that application can and do work with files that are not visible for a regular user. I.e. if your application opens a file and keeps it open, the user can delete the file and it will disappear from directory listings - however the file is still there and the contents can be accessed by the application without problems. When the application closes the file (or the application is closed) - the file is permanently deleted from the file system.


Boot Camp External Drive only booting to one computer

The general rule is that the 2015 and newer Macs can no longer boot operating systems using the BIOS method. This is the method used in the installation instructions you refer to. Also, generally 2011 and older Macs can not boot Windows from external drives. Therefore, the installation method, you refer to, generally only works for the 2012 through 2014 model year Mac computers.

The steps to determine if your Mac can BIOS boot operation systems is given below.

From the menu bar, select "About this Mac". The pop up window
should display the model year and screen size of your Mac. The pop
up window for my Mac is shown below. I have a  20-inch, Mid 2007
iMac.

Goto the Apple web site: Install Windows 7 and earlier on your Mac
using Boot Camp. If the "Boot Camp Support Software" is listed
for your model Mac, then your Mac can BIOS boot operating systems.

  But even if both computers qualify to BIOS boot Windows from external drives, you have the problem of the drivers. One of the steps, in the instruction you refer to, is to install the Boot Camp Support Software. This software installs the correct drives for your model Mac. If you then try to boot Windows using a different model Mac, the installed drivers will be wrong for the this Mac.


How do I sync notes between two macs with the new Notes.app in Mountain Lion?

Yes. You have to have an iCloud account for iCloud syncing to work.


Single-button shortcut for "Do not Disturb"

Sure. Download the ruby script from https://gist.github.com/samnung/c7e767167cf70531ccdc and then just make a bash wrapper to call it.

do_not_disturb.rb on

You'll may want a tool like FastScripts to call the script (and if so, place your bash calling script in ~/Library/Scripts for it to show up there nicely)


Mail.app smart mailbox, how to negate a search filter clause (_not_ flagged)?

I would create a smart mailbox containing all Flagged items, and then (this is the one you want) a smart mailbox with the 'Not In Mailbox' option to return all the items that are not Flagged, and thus not in that mailbox.

Create this first:

Then for the mailbox you want, create this one:

Worked for me in Mail 4.6, OSX 10.6.8.


It is not possible to store 54GB in 32GB of space. It sounds like it is erroneously displaying how much space it wants to fit all the images. File systems mark memory as allocated before transferring to them, which could be why you are getting strange numbers.


How to fix Final Cut Pro X's "Modified File" message

Found a solution to this.

In FCPX go to File -> Delete Generated Event Files -> Delete optimized media = Voila!

That worked for me instantly. Hope you guys find it helpful too.


Synology NAS - automatic mount in finder and permanent connection

Regarding lost iTunes Media Library:

Start iTunes with SHIFT Key down and select NAS Library as new iTunes Library.

Make sure you still have the files iTunes Libary.itl and iTunes Libary.xml after eventualy deleting 'old' Media Folder.


Problem of installation xcode4 and then xcode3

I think the way to have Xcode 3 and 3 is to install Xcode 3 first - it will be in /Developer. Then Xcode 4 install will move Xcode 3 to /Developer-old  and install Xcode 4 in /Developer. So in your case delete /Developer and start again.


There are one of three things going on here.  I'm not sure which is most likely.

You have long-pressed an app icon and entered into the move/delete mode where you can adjust locations and remove apps.  To get out of this, click home.
You are experiencing the parallax effect of the home screen.  You can turn this off in Settings>General>Accessibility>Reduce Motion *On*
You are trying to be funny.  Stop that.


2008 Mac Pro: Any chance of upgrading hardware to current technology?

You should be good to upgrade to a modern GPU (PCI-X). Keep in mind that you will need to purchase an 'Apple' version of any graphics card you upgrade to.


Removing an icon from Mac OS X menubar when Cmd+Drag won't work

If it is opened at login, check login items in the Users & Groups preference pane, {~,}/Library/Launch{Daemons,Agents}/, or /var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd.peruser.501/overrides.plist.

You could also try opening Activity Monitor and quitting all processes that seem suspicious.


What will I lose if I let iTunes Match expire, and instead subscribe to Apple Music?

Your understanding of the DRM is correct.

The functionality of iTunes Match is included with Apple Music, so yeah: win win.


Why can't I uninstall a Unity game from my iPhone?

Use iTunes to sync all apps you want except that one.


In OS 10.13.6, I was able to replace time.apple.com. with pool.ntp.org. in the "Set date and time automatically" field of the "Date & Time" pref pane of System Preferences by highlighting it and typing over it--after authenticating to unlock it, of course. I verified the change in Terminal.app using cat /etc/ntp.conf, which returned server pool.ntp.org..

  EDIT: Response to OP’s comment below

In my case, the name of the server listed in /etc/ntp.conf does change immediately upon selecting a different pre-set server in the "Date & Time" preference pane (that is, as long as the "Set date and time automatically" checkbox is ticked).

Out of curiosity, I used sudo nano /etc/ntp.conf to directly edit the name of the server in the network time server configuration file. Although the name of the server in the preference pane remained unchanged, that was the case only until the next activation of timed, when the name of the server I had entered indeed appeared in the preference pane’s text entry field. (I believe timed runs once an hour or upon the system waking from more than an hour’s sleep.) This same sequence of a new server’s name remaining undisclosed by System Preferences until the time daemon runs occurred when I set the network time server using sudo systemsetup -setnetworktimeserver foo.time.foo.

(And, yes, I really am on High Sierra.)


Is it possible to set how long the lock screen will disappear on the iPhone?

There is no setting to customise this. The only solution would be to do a screen action so it stays on for longer. Like, swipe up to see your notifications or press the Home Button to the passcode screen and return to the wallpaper screen.

On iOS 12 there is a solution. Unlock your phone, swipe down from the top and view your notifications from there. On this screen the iPhone will dim according to your Autolock settings which can be changed in Settings -> Display & Brightness -> Autolock.


Are there keyboard shortcuts for emoji on a bluetooth keyboard for iOS?

I've found a workaround using the "text replacement" feature. In Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Text replacement, you can add the emoji and assign them their equivalent text-based shortcuts, like in the screenshot below.


How to select paragraphs with similar style in Pages 5?

As far as I know, there is no “Select All Uses of …” command in Pages 5.

You don’t need that command to edit the format of all a style’s uses, though. When you change a paragraph's style, like changing some “Body”-styled paragraph’s font, an “Update” button will appear beside the style name in the format sidebar, and the style name will append a * to indicate that it was modified. Click the button and all paragraphs using that style will update.


How to completely remove iMovie and avoid updates

If you hold ALT/OPTION, the Appstore (on the purchases tab) gives you an option to cancel the download (assuming it is incomplete).

Depending on the version of OS X you have additional steps may be required to remove the application support files (in /Library/Application Support/).

Appcleaner can be used as well, it does a good job of finding the dependencies; but to enable the removal of system and default applications you need to change the Appcleaner preferences.

I've never needed these options, so proceed with caution.

There is a debug menu in the Appstore that has several more advanced options for controlling the application. Resetting the application may help in this case.

Another option, but that it is ideal is to let the update run (possibly reinstall it first) and then uninstall it again.


Why are my files all now within Volumes?

macOS Catalina has a new feature to further isolate the OS from data. In the APFS container it is installed within, an APFS volume for the OS is created alongside an APFS volume for your data. The former is mounted read-only at the root of the filesystem, and the latter is mounted within /System/Volumes.

Directories containing writable data are linked from the read-only volume to the data volume, to form one apparent disk. The individual disks still appear separately if you open the mount point.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/103/

A Desktop folder on the desktop is a bug. The other screenshots show expected behaviour.


Using HD monitor with 2011 Apple Macbook Pro

Your machine will support up to 2560x1600 on an external monitor.
However, using a converter thunderbolt to HDMI will output max of 1920x1080. If the monitor you are planning to connect to your laptop is HD(720p) or Full HD (1080p) then you are good to go and can use a converter thunderbolt to HDMI. If the monitor's resolution is higher than 1080p then you will need a minidisplay port to display port adapter(mini display port is the same thing as thunderbolt, but it is cheaper to find it looking for a mini display port). Make sure that the monitor has a display port, otherwise you will need to use dual DVI cable with an apple adapter, which is well overpriced and may be considered as an overkill. Hope this helps.


Macbook Pro 15" Late 2011 - Swap HDD with SSD - Fan always 2000 rpm

You most likely have a malfunctioning sensor, and it's not necessarily restricted to the CPU.

There are sensors for ambient air, the heat sink/pipe, the palm rest, the CPU, the GPU, the hard drive, etc.  Any/all of these could be malfunctioning (or detecting) a malfunction to cause the SMC to spin up your fan.

To diagnose this problem:

Return your MacBook Pro to it's original configuration.  If the problem goes away, then you know it's due to an issue that was introduced due to the modification.
Run Apple Diagnostics.  Regardless if the problem goes away in the previous step, run Apple Hardware Test (AHT).  Hold the D key while booting from a powered off state with the AC adapter connected.    If there is an problem, this tool will likely tell you what the issue is (if there is one).

No issue - you have a good baseline to start working with
Issue - you will have a diagnostic code to start working with to solve the problem

Install the SSD in the HDD location.  Since this is your objective, this is the next logical step.  If you encounter issues here, it's related to the SSD installation.  You will want to run AHT here again to verify all is well.
Install the HDD in the optical bay caddy.  This being your final step, install it and check performance.  Run AHT again. Verify that you don't get any issues.

The key here is to do each step individually to see where something could have gone wrong.  It's also entirely plausible with the disconnection/reconnection of components something wasn't connected properly.  Double check your work. Double check that you didn't accidentally knock something loose.

A note on the inner workings of your MBP

The fans never stop, they are always spinning.  1000 RPM is typically the lowest speed.
Fans spin up because a sensor indicated there was a temp spike and the SMC responded by spinning up the fan
Controlling the fan is a bad idea.  Fans remove heat that's generated by the different components.  If the fan can't remove the heat (quickly enough) it will throttle your CPU to generate less heat.

When you control the fan, you treat the symptom.  If you really must have it quiet, treat the cause and lower your CPU speed, thereby reducing the heat, the fans will follow.  You will sacrifice performance but not endanger your CPU.


time machine runs very slowly, then stops

I've just dealt with a similar issue, and hope I can help someone. I did a completely clean install of High Sierra, then Time Machine stopped working after four days.

Your error message indicates that this is a problem with the drive you're backing up, or perhaps Time Machine's index of it.

Here are the steps to take:

Check your local snapshots, and delete anything fishy - see the empty one from the day that TM stopped working:

You would do this: sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2018-09-27-003128

Try using disk utility to repair all the volumes and drives again. If it's an APFS drive you're backing up, check all of the volumes, as well as the container volume and the disk. You can try deleting all the local snapshots too, and again try repairing the volumes and disks.
If that doesn't work, I would turn disable Time Machine - go into System Preferences and uncheck automatic backups. Unmount (restart if you have to) the drive with the most recent full backup on it - we don't want to touch that. Then, remove it by clicking "Select Disk" and "Remove Disk." Try a backup then, with just the one drive. If that doesn't work, try repairing that drive again in Disk Utility.
The next thing to try would be to remove the drive that's still associated, rename it "Time Machine Backups," and then add it back. You shouldn't lose the backups that are already there.
If all else fails, I would start over - reformat this drive in Disk Utility, but not as HFS+ Journaled - that was a mistake I made numerous times. We want Time Machine to format the drive. That should at least get you going again...

My problem was that it mysteriously wouldn't copy files.

For a week, no matter what I did, the same thing would happen - Time Machine would start, go very slowly, and then stop and give me this message:

It wouldn't complete an initial backup even. I had reformatted over and over (as HFS+ Journaled), deleted local snapshots, tried repairing the backup drive and the system drive.

The infuriating fix to my problem was simply to remove my encrypted APFS volume. fsck/First Aid kept returning a problem with the container and system volumes - "mount apfs exit status 73" and "System check exit code is 78." All that was happening was that it couldn't mount the encrypted volume. After I deleted that, I was finally able to fix Time Machine.

I still had trouble though, even after zeroing out the first 300MB of the backup drive to totally nuke the partition map and EFI. Eventually I formatted it as exFAT, let Time Machine format it, which it failed to do:

And then I went back to Disk Utility and formatted it as HFS+ Journaled Case Sensitive. That's when it started working.


Keyboard Shortcuts in Tooltips in macOS Calculator

Tooltip text (presented on hovering the mouse cursor over the Calculator app buttons) does show the keyboard shortcut. The following is a screenshot from Calculator app version Version 10.14 (123), running in macOS Catalina 10.5.1.


I'd say the file downloaded is corrupted, you should be able to open the .dmg by simply double clicking it (I downloaded XQuartz a couple of days ago and could open the .dmg without a problem).

Unfortunately, the download page doesn't provide a checksum to check against, so I'll provide the one I generated:

  98b2ca8580046d5b91250c5a244c8182437dc9d7

This checksum uniquely identifies the XQuarz .dmg.

You can generate a checksum of XQuartz on your Mac like this (from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1652):

Open Terminal (in /Application/Utilities)
Type:

openssl sha1 ~/Downloads/XQuartz-2.7.4.dmg

(adapt to the path where XQuartz-2.7.4.dmg was downloaded)
Compare the number you get with the number above. If they are different, the file is corrupted.


My MacBook Air suddenly shut down today, is there an easy way to find the associated log entry?

You can get the previous shutdown cause from the log history.

In macOS Sierra and later with unified logging:

log show --predicate 'eventMessage contains "Previous shutdown cause"' --last 24h

Earlier than macOS Sierra, filer system.log for some recent results:

grep "Previous shutdown cause" /var/log/system.log

Then look up the code on this table I maintain: Previous Shutdown Causes Explained


The beta of iOS 12 includes Screen Time which solves this problem rather conclusively at the OS level. Here's a couple of my screenshots from revent use:


On iOS, how can I insert a date/time stamp while I'm writing something?

Sadly, the Shortcuts app is one item short of doing this pretty much natively.

It has a text function that pastes in the value of the current date, but there isn’t ISO formatting option.

I tried a Pythonista script that works very well to get the values you need, just am missing some glue to turn it into a shortcut.

import datetime
iso = datetime.date.today().isoformat()
print(iso)

Siri can even trigger this shortcut (or share sheet) for you, once I figure out how to get the two connected.


No, not with "standard Macs".

The feature you are looking for is called LOM (Lights Out Management). It enables you to start a machine even if it's powered off.

Apple sold Xserve servers that supported LOM, but with regular Macs it's not possible.


Preserve Window Spaces Placement Between Restarts

I encountered this posting while searching for a way to do exactly what OP wanted to do.

Interestingly, Finder seems to do it right -- when you have multiple Finder windows in various Spaces, and restart your Mac (or if you just "killall Finder" at Terminal, which restarts Finder), they go into the Spaces where they were.

Also, Safari often does that too. Safari seems to preserve the Space each window was opened at, if you restart your Mac with all the browsers open. But Safari fails to remember Spaces if you simply quit and restart the app itself.

So I guess it's not true that it is impossible to achieve this, but there seem to be some issues within the Mac system that do not allow this all the time for all apps.
But I'm hopeful that someone could find out a tweak.


How do I get my late-2012 MacBook Pro to work with my Seiki 39 inch 4k monitor?

You will need an active adapter that converts the DisplayPort 1.1 signal coming from your Thunderbolt port to an HDMI 1.4 Signal. The UltraAV Mini DisplayPort 1.1 to HDMI 1.4 Active Adapter for example. The regular (passive) adapters will not give you the HDMI 1.4 that is required for your resolution.

Also, make sure your HDMI cable is High Speed certified (sometimes it's called a Category 2 cable), and that you use the right resolution, refresh rate and color depth.

HDMI resolutions

HDMI Standard    1.3a                 1.4                   2.0
HDMI cable       Standard/Cat1        HighSpeed/Cat2        HighSpeed/Cat2
Resolution       2880x576  2560x1600  3840x2160  4096x2160  4096x2160
Max Refresh Rate 50 Hz     75 Hz      30 Hz      24 Hz      60 Hz
Max Color Depth  48 bpp    30 bpp     36 bpp     48 bpp     30 bpp
                                      ^

Mind the maximum color depth, although 24 bits per pixel should suffice for most uses. On the Mac, 24 bit is sometimes called "millions of colors".


Hidden folder without a dot at the start

You can use chflags

To hide a file from Finder

chflags hidden /Path/To/File

To unhide:

chflags nohidden /Path/To/File


rEFInd boot manager not showing EFI shell

You need a compatible EFI Shell program (called shell.efi) in your EFI partition.

As mentioned in the rEFInd config file documentation, in the showtools parameter section:

  Note that the shell, memtest, gdisk, apple_recovery, mok_tool, and fwupdate options all require the presence of programs not included with rEFInd.

The rEFInd CD version does include an EFI shell (there is also a link for it on the Installing Additional Components section of the documentation) but this doesn't work on my macs (all 2015 or older) as the Apple EFI firmware is too old.

You can download an older EDK version 1 binary which should work on any version :

Download Shell_Full.efi from tianocore/edk2
Rename it to shell.efi
Mount your ESP with mkdir /Volumes/ESP followed by sudo mount -t msdos /dev/disk0s1 /Volumes/ESP
Copy shell.efi to directory /Volumes/ESP/EFI/tools where rEFInd will look by default (make directory if it doesn't exist).
rEFInd will display shell as a small icon underneath the OS icons if it finds the executable.


Retime pop-up missing in Final Cut Pro 10.3.4

You're looking at the wrong side of the editor window!
Look to the left of that line, at the bottom-left corner of the viewer where the preview is shown.


Is there a tool to simply join 2 pdf pages in one?

You can try PDFSam.  PDFSam stands for PDF Split and Merge. Its a free open source app. There is a Pro version you can buy but the basic version is free.


Keyboard shortcut for Force Quitting the current application?

Well, the Force Quit dialog opens with the currently running application already selected. So the shortcut is kind of Cmd-Opt-EscReturn (which IMHO is good enough for all practical purposes).


How to get all apps restored to an iPhone from a backup in iTunes?

In order for itunes to restore your apps, the app must be in your iTunes library. It sounds like they are not. Which means iTunes can't restore them.


Remove Startup Arduino CreateAgent on High Sierra

There are instructions on the GitHub page https://github.com/arduino/arduino-create-agent for both completely uninstalling the Arduino Create Multi Platform Agent and for disabling its automatic startup.

You have asked how to do the latter. In brief, from the Finder:

Click on the Go menu, and select 'Go to the Folder'
Type ~/Library/LaunchAgents and press Enter
Select the ArduinoCreateAgent.plist file
Right click on the file name and select 'Move to Trash'

Alternatively, using Terminal.app, issue the command

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ArduinoCreateAgent.plist

Using the second method of disabling automatic startup has two benefits: it retains the ability to easily re-enable it should you wish, while also allowing you the ability to start the process manually. To restore automatic startup, issue this command in Terminal:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ArduinoCreateAgent.plist

To launch the process on a manual "at-will" basis:

launchctl start ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ArduinoCreateAgent

[note that the .plist extension is omitted when using launchctl start]


How do I uninstall iCloud extras on a Windows machine?

iCloud doesn't install other applications, it just provides the ability to set up sync services with your existing applications and those iCloud services. In iCloud Control Panel, turn off those services using the checkboxes to not use those services in applications.


Copy files from Folder A to Folder B based on Text File C with bash

Assuming your file C contains a list of file names to copy:

A="~/Documents/folderA"
B="~/Documents/folderB"
while IFS= read -r file; do
    cp "${A}/${file}" "${B}/"
done < ~/Documents/c.txt

should do the trick.


I got the same thing just now, it's the Libre Office update icon but sad it's not responding on 1 click...


Use Launchpad while downloading from AppStore

You can open Finder and go to your Applications folder to access all your apps.


"Re"-download 10.8 After Purchase of a New Mac

You can download Apple's official OSX Recovery Disk assistant to create a flash drive with the capability to re-install OSX on an eligible Apple computer. A flash drive (it must be larger then 1GB) also enables you to easily re-install OSX on products such as the MacBook Air which don't have optical drives.

There is also a support document about the Recovery Disk Assistant.


Problems logging into MacOS using Active Directory user not working, but SSH works fine

I found a solution by deleting the user and creating a new user with the same name through the command line. I've no idea why the problem happened, but all other solutions didn't work.


Can the cp command be used to restore a hard drive?

Yes, you could just copy it back, but it may not be bootable.  That can be fixed by installing OS X over the top of your files. It should preserve what is there and make it bootable.


Using an sd card for extra space on bootcamp

When working in Windows on Bootcamp, consider using the system entirely as a windows system. So you would want to format the SD card on the windows side. Then use Steam to save to the SD card itself.

Trying to merge the SD card with your internal storage on either Mac or Windows is going to be a recipe for disaster.

You may also want to consider the speed of the SD card when determining which games might play terribly off of it and which may do ok. You can get Blackmagic Disk Speed Test on the App Store for free Blackmagic Disk Speed Test if you want to test it out. Format the SD card for Mac format first using Disk Utility. Test the SD card with Blackmagic. Then test your internal drive as well. Anything over 100MB/s should be reasonable for most games -- less and you may want to consider what to put on the SD card and avoid games that push the drive read/write speeds.

Once you're back in windows, erase the SD card again and use something like NTFS format so it's nice and fast.

Then follow some steps for Steam to save the games you want to the SD card. For example this video on Youtube talks about the exact issue you're trying to do (albeit not on a Mac using Bootcamp).
Save Steam Games to SD card
Here are the basic steps:

Make a folder on the SD card to store games in
In Steam, click Steam menu in upper left, choose Backup and Restore Games. Then click Downloads.
Click Steam Library Folders, then click "Add library folder" and browse for the new folder you created above on your SD card.
Right click the SD card option in that window and choose Make default steam folder. Then new games will be downloaded to the SD card instead of the internal drive.

Enjoy!


Can you use Sidecar with 5G only to connect Macbook Pro to iPad Pro M1 devices reliably for work

Sidecar uses a wired or direct wireless connection. When using wireless there is a restriction against creating a mobile hotspot, but this restriction would not apply to a wired Sidecar configuration.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210380
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204023


The problem was solved after running a command

diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk1 0g


Trying to format SD card for raspberry pi, but I get permission denied

Below itemizes some of the problems with procedure posted in your question.

As others have posted in the comments and answers, you need to precede the fdisk command with sudo.
Other users have suggested that the security setting need to be modified. The version of macOS used for verifying this answer was Catalina version 10.15.3. Below is the System Preferences setting in the Security & Privacy pane. Under Full Disk Access, the Terminal application is not checked off, as shown below.

Under Files and Folders, the following was checked off for Terminal.

The fdisk command in your question is not being applied to a drive. The identifier disk2s1 could represent a partition, container, session or volume. While the fdisk command can allow for this, there is no logical reason for doing so. The device should be of the form /dev/diskN where N is a positive integer. Care should be taken to confirm you are actually referring to the SD card.
The fdisk can be an interactive command. This means the command can require text read from standard input. This text is often referred to a input commands. Under Linux, fdisk defaults to interactive. However under macOS, fdisk does not. To make fdisk interactive under macOS, the ‑e option must be included. In your question, this option was omitted.
You tried to pipe the input commands to fdisk. Each individual command was separated by a space (). However, each command should have been separated by a newline (\n). Basically a newline is the same as entering a return from the keyboard. Also the string should have be enclosed by the characters $'' instead of "".
The input commands to fdisk presented in your questions would be valid if the operating system was Arch Linux. The equivalent commands which would be correct under macOS are given below.

erase
print
edit 1
c
n
2048
204800
edit 2
83
n

quit
y

The correcting for the above errors would lead to the command shown below. Here, the input commands have be abbreviated.

    echo $'er\np\ne 1\nc\nn\n2048\n204800\ne 2\n83\nn\n\n\nq\ny'|sudo fdisk -e /dev/disk2

  Note: In the above command disk2 was used to identify the SD Card. You may need to use a different identifier.

Below is the output that should appear when executing the above command for your SD card.

fdisk: could not open MBR file /usr/standalone/i386/boot0: No such file or directory
Enter 'help' for information
fdisk: 1> fdisk:*1> Disk: /dev/disk2    geometry: 3891/255/63 [62521344 sectors]
Offset: 0   Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
fdisk:*1>          Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
Partition id ('0' to disable)  [0 - FF]: [0] (? for help) Do you wish to edit in CHS mode? [n] Partition offset [0 - 62521344]: [63] Partition size [1 - 62519296]: [62519296] fdisk:*1>          Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
Partition id ('0' to disable)  [0 - FF]: [0] (? for help) Do you wish to edit in CHS mode? [n] Partition offset [0 - 62521344]: [206848] Partition size [1 - 62314496]: [62314496] fdisk:*1> Writing current MBR to disk.

The first input command was erase, therefore the output above contains mostly zeroes. To see the results, you would need enter the command given below.

fdisk /dev/disk2

After entering the above command, you should see the output shown below.

Disk: /dev/disk2    geometry: 3891/255/63 [62521344 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: 0C 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [      2048 -     204800] Win95 FAT32L
 2: 83 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    206848 -   62314496] Linux files*
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

This raspberrypi.org website offers advice when certain error messages appear. I have repeated some of this advice below. You will need to replace diskN with the correct identifier.

If the command reports Resource busy, you need to unmount the drive first using the command given below.

sudo diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN

If the command reports Operation not permitted you need to disable SIP before continuing.

  Note: I would strongly recommend disabling SIP as a last resort.

If the command reports Permission denied, the partition table of the SD card is being protected against being overwritten by macOS. Erase the SD card's partition table using this command:

sudo diskutil partitionDisk /dev/diskN 1 MBR "Free Space" "%noformat%" 100%

That command will also set the permissions on the device to allow writing.

IMO, I believe you should attempt to use Arch Linux instead of macOS. I tried installing the latest Arch Linux in a VirtualBox virtual machine. (VirtualBox is a a free product). However, I could not get the virtual machine to work with the builtin SD card reader on my iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013). I had no better luck with an external USB SD card reader. Maybe I did not have the correct settings or maybe different hardware would make the difference. Also, I did not try using the sudo vboxmanage internalcommands createrawvmdk ... commands to expose the SD card to the virtual machine.

Instead of a virtual machine, I opted to try a live version of Arch Linux. Here, Arch Linux was able to access the external SD card reader, but not the internal reader. Live means you create a Arch Linux bootable USB flash drive. Once you boot from the flash drive, you can enter the commands to install Arch Linux on the SD card. The Arch Linux ISO file was name archlinux-2020.03.01-x86_64.iso and came from this website, although other mirrors can be found here.

The instructions for using macOS to create the bootable flash drive can be found here. An image taken from this website is shown below.

  Note: My iMac has a wireless keyboard. Arch Linux failed to work with this keyboard. I had to resort to a wired keyboard.

I did hypothesize that your question came from a website such as this one. An image of the installation instructions is shown below.

In testing, I modified the above instructions so the downloaded file would be stored on the SD card. After installing this file can be deleted. To stored the file on the SD card, replace the commands given in step 5 with the commands shown below

cd root
wget http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-rpi-4-latest.tar.gz
cd ..
bsdtar -xpf root/ArchLinuxARM-rpi-4-latest.tar.gz -C root
sync


Can a Mac Mini have 3 external monitors connected to it?

Yes, a mac mini can have multiple monitors connected to it. There are now very good USB to Video solutions on the market that will correct this limitation.

Steps:

Choose a good Mac compatible USB to DVI or USB to VGA adapter. There
are many available from different manufacturers. Look for adapters
that contain the DisplayLink chip as these are Intel-Mac compatible.
Make sure you've downloaded the latest DisplayLink Mac Drivers, like
these: http://sewelldirect.com/Drivers/DisplayLink-OSx-1.1.zip
Install the drivers through the guided setup by first selecting the
image file (.dmg) and opening it, accept the license agreement,
select which drive to install the driver on (Macintosh HD), press the
install button, and restart your computer.
Plug your USB to Video adapter into your computer's USB port and
attach your monitor's cable to the adapter. You can do this while
your computer is on and it will recognize the device in the same way
it recognizes most plug-n-play devices.
Once your computer recognizes the adapter, it should automatically
extend your desktop. If you prefer that it mirror the original
monitor instead, or if you want to change any of the resolution
settings, go to the Systems Preferences area and select "Displays".

When setting up multiple monitors choosing two of the same size is recommended.

Source.


How do I type š on an international keyboard?

Right Option (Alt) v s

You must have U.S. Extended keyboard layout enabled for the above to work.


I cannot open an iCloud account on my device because ‘the maximum number of free accounts have been activated’

Is your iPhone second handed? Probably the previous user has used all accounts. All you have to do is setup iCloud on any iPhone or iPad that has not been setup to iCloud or has remaining setup for iCloud and then sign in on blocked device.
I've done this with all my devices and all work fine.


Any partition software just to partition unused space?

You can use Partition Magic in Windows and divide hard on two virtual hard disks. And then use one for Mac and one for Win.

And for Mac and Win can work at one hard drive, just reformat a hard drive to FAT32.

If you don't want format your hard drive:

Open Partition Magic
Create a second virtual hard drive on free space. Recommended percent: 50% on 50%
Reformat second virtual hard drive to FAT32


Display appears different on two accounts using same color profile

It sounds like a color profile issue.

Does account "B" have any custom color profiles installed in ~/Library/ColorSync/ ? If so try moving them out of that folder (to the Desktop, Trash, or wherever) then log out and back in to see if that helps.


I'm not sure it can be done automatically, but...

I'd just use the shortcut method.

I use 'mynm' to trigger mine - it's not something I'm likely to ever use for another purpose. Same for myeml myphone myaddy etc

Substitutions can even do emojis or multiple-line text with Return key - so long as you copy-paste them into the shortcut, not try to type them 'live'

You'll find it's easier, long-term, to type a few letters at the end of your message than fight it every time you don't want it to happen


There’s not an App, but there’s a tool (one of my favorites) that does this exact thing - iPerf3.
Normally, you’d run iPerf3 on two different nodes to evaluate network performance; one as a server and the other as the client, but in your scenario, you need to check performance to the Internet (nodes you don’t control).  iPerf has a solution for that too:  iPerf Public Servers
For an example of an iPerf in action, see  What dowload speeds is the Apple USB Ethernet Adapter capable of?
You can use these public servers to measure/monitor Internet performance.  What you’ll need to do is run iPerf periodically (10 seconds may to too short an interval) and at the end of the command append a file redirect to send the output to a file.  For example:
iperf3 -c IP <Address/Hostname> >> filename.txt

The >> filename.txt will create a file called “filename.txt” if it doesn’t exist and the double greater than sign will append the output to the file and not overwrite it.  Use a single > to overwite the file.
You could use cron (deprecated) or use launchd to run the command periodically.  10 seconds is much to short an interval; maybe every few minutes or so would be better.
The best part about this tool is that it’s free (as in beer). Period. No trial, no lite version with an upgrade to pro, etc.


Accidentally hid a game that I bought and can’t get it back

First things first: Any purchased app will not cost you (a second time). Even if you ordinarily search for it and click on BUY again. If you use the same credentials you used to buy it, the App Store will recognize it and will let you download it for free.

In order to unhide any app you once purchased, you need to sign into your Apple ID account inside iTunes, then click on your account name and choose "Account Info". If yo have hidden purchases, you have a section between "Apple ID Summary" and "Purchase History" called "iTunes in the Cloud", where you can manage hidden purchases.

Once in there, choose "Apps" on the right side at the top and then look for your inadvertently hidden app to "Unhide" it.

If you bought the app for OS X, the same can be done on the App Store for OS X.


It's a known bug since the release of macOS 10.14.5.

The blank window that shows up when you try to add an item to your library is actually supposed to contain new terms of service that you have to agree to, but it's bugged on macOS and just displays an empty page instead.

The only solution right now seems to be to go to Apple Music on any of your iOS devices (iPhone, iPad) and add a random item to your library there, then restart your iTunes on Mac and it should be fixed.

This bug has been around since 10.14.5 Beta and Apple still hasn't fixed it, which blows my mind, because it basically makes Apple Music unusable for anyone without an iOS device.


How can I stop my MacBook Pro from automatically sleeping when I lock the screen?

Had the same problem in my Macbook(15") pro running 10.9.4.

I wanted my Mac to be locked while I was away (so configured hot corners) but at the same time did not want it to sleep (irrespective of whether it is connected to power or not) so that my wifi will be "ON" always for my jabber & mails. So here's what I did to prevent Mac from sleeping:

Open Terminal
Run sudo pmset -a sleep 0

Explanation of the command:

pmset command is to manipulate power management settings.
-a specifies that the setting applies for all conditions (power & battery)
sleep configure system sleep timer
0 to disable

Check out man pmset for more information.


Can't connect to LAN and internet at same time

This is usually caused by having the wrong subnet masks specified for the networks.

In your case with IP-adresses 10.100.8.1 and 10.125.32.1 you'll probably the subnet mask set to 255.0.0.0 (/8) for both networks - that is incorrect.

Change the subnet masks so they are for example 255.255.0.0 (/16) instead, and you'll be able to route normally.

Remember to only set a default gateway in the subnet associated with the interface you actually want to use as an Internet connection.


It sounds to me like you may be describing Quicksilver, which is, among other things, an application launcher.

http://qsapp.com/index.php

I use it daily and it can look very much the way you have just described.  It has several different interfaces.

However...  It is definitely not spotlight, and it doesn't use any spotlight like icon...

Mine also pops up in the middle of the screen, not the top right like spotlight....

Does this sound like what you may have been looking at?


How do I make my windows partition show up at boot time without holding option?

Unfortunately there is no default boot loader option built-in to Macs. Your best bet is going with a custom bootloader like rEFInd (see http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ for download and instructions). Normally I don't just include a link and call it a day but obviously I'm not going to have an alternative download available for someone else's program... and if the program is still available to download, the instructions will be right there with it at the program's site.

If after downloading, reading the documentation, and attempting the setup for this you still have issues, I recommend putting up a fresh question specific to that.

Aside from that, there are no options without getting very low level into nvram settings that you do NOT want to mess with... or at the very least I will not help someone mess with.

Good luck!


How can I override default Python modules with ones I install with pip?

The solution to this is virtual environments.

Each environment you have can have separate non conflicting libraries (and python versions) so one can have pillow and another pil.

The proicess is basically

Create a new environment - this will create links to python etc
Install the libraries you want
Modify your shell environment so that the path points to the python you created in step 1

Tools are included in python 3.6 and 3.7.  To switch between different versions of python see pyenv.

If you need to install another python you might also consider conda.  This can include 2.7 and is sort of equivalent to the combination above but includes binaries of C libraries.

For Apple's python 2.7 see pipenv & virtual environments


How do I sync contacts between 2 iCloud accounts?

The easiest way to do this as a one time thing, is to open Contacts.app on a Mac that is set up on your iCloud account. Select all contacts and drag them to the desktop. That will export them all as a .vcard file.

Then move the file to another account on a Mac set up with your husband's iCloud account. Open Contacts.app, and drag the .vcard file into the app.

That will get all of your contacts into his account. But this will be a one time thing, and you may get some duplicates.


You're confused because on Mac, you access iOS App Store from iTunes, but it is actually iOS App Store. So all your apps are from iOS App Store, not the Mac App Store which is a separate App like iOS App Store is separate on iDevices than iTunes.


Why is the system has detected the OS as being new. Perhaps you reset the NVRAM and exposed this or disk has failed and the OS doesn’t match the stored fingerprint or the hardware just happened to fail coincidentally to what actions you took. Firmware passwords don’t prompt until you try to boot to a non-designated OS. As long as the designated disk is fine, no password is needed.
The passcode is stored in the machine cryptographically and the specific model year dictates what your options are now.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204455

As long as you have a screen different than the one above, you might have an activation lock, MDM lock or just FileVault situation and then you can use the normal erase and install or password reset mechanism which is much easier to recover.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202860


Can Siri be told a ringtone when setting a timer?

Sorry, looks like Siri pulls whatever is set in the Clock app for its timers.  The only solution is to manually change it in Clock each time.


It sounds like you may need to dive into the logs to get some more info.

MacOS uses unified logging so the logs aren't stored in a specific file. In Terminal, this command should print all TimeMachine backup failure messages:

log show --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.TimeMachine"' --info | grep 'Backup failed'

However this cuts out quite a bit of information, so you may need to use the broader search:

log show --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.TimeMachine"' --info | grep 'Error'

Running this on my machine showed TimeMachine to be quite noisy so it may take some time to find something useful in the output especially if you have been running TimeMachine for a while

Post back here with any errors you find.


Put this in your ~/.tm_properties:

tabSize         = 4
softTabs        = true


How do I bulk delete incompatible apps in iOS 11

As far as I know, there's no button to simply "Delete all 32-bit apps", but you can delete large numbers of apps quite quickly using iTunes.

This won't work with the latest versions of iTunes (12.7+), so if you've updated you will need to download an older version.

Select your device next to the media type selection menu near the top of the screen.
Go to the Apps section.
For each app you would like to remove, click the X on its icon or find it in the list and click Remove. (iTunes won't show you which are incompatible there, but you can cross-reference with the list on your device and knock them out in a relatively speedy way.)
When you've finished, click the Apply button at the bottom right.


iPhone 3GS won't let iMessage show my number; only email

I've found the best solution to these iMessage and Face Time woes is to just turn the service off, then back on again. That causes it to re-activate with Apple's servers, which should register your phone number as a usable iMessage sender.

The "Waiting for Activation" message suggests that this process wasn't completed properly, and/or there's some issue with Apple's servers. Try toggling it, and if it still doesn't work, try it again later, as it may be a server side issue that you need to wait for Apple to resolve.


Do people that are called through FaceTime show up on my carrier's bill?

Facetime uses Wifi or Cellular data so will not show as regular calls on your carrier bill.

  You can use FaceTime on any of these devices on Wi-Fi: iPhone 4 or later, iPad Pro (all models), iPad 2 or later, iPad mini (all models), and iPod touch 4th generation or later (only iPod touch 5th generation or later support FaceTime audio calling).
  With a cellular data plan, you can also use FaceTime without Wi-Fi on any of these devices: iPhone 4s or later, iPad Pro (all models), and iPad (3rd generation or later).

Details of your FaceTime call history are stored locally on your device.


Can you increase the font size in Reminders?

if there is a hack it is probably related to this one:

Can I increase the default font size for the Notes in Mountain Lion?

then all we need to do is find out the font name


Two USB-C monitors with 2016 13-inch MBP w/ 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports

I have tried again today, and after plugging the monitors in and out, it works as expected now... I am not sure why this happened. Perhaps my macbook detected one of them as a display and the other as a charger instead of a display? I am not sure.


Here is your model on EveryMac.com, according to them it will support a maximum of 32 GB of system RAM.

The mid-2010 iMacs support 1333 MHz PC3-10600 DDR3 SO-DIMMs with 204-pin.  Crucial mirrors this statement.

According to the datasheet you linked, the Kingston RAM is 667MHz.  I believe when it comes to RAM, the machine simply lowers the frequency to a consistent level in order for the RAM to be compatible across the entire computer.


Open an app in low resolution but not zoomed

You can't open a single app in low resolution unscaled, but you can set the display to a non-HiDPI resolution such as 2880×1800 using an app such as RDM.


How do I open MS Word and MS Excel documents with Google Docs as default?

Currently, you have one thing against the feasibility, and that is Google Docs (even offline mode) is designed to work with the document you uploaded to Google Docs cloud (Remember why Google wants you to put everything on the cloud?)

If you don't feel like going to Google Docs and start uploading files manually, you can use Cyberduck, to batch upload all your documents all at once, and then you can use Google Docs to access the documents.

Note that I put bold on "currently". Who knows if Google might release a true offline mode where it can read your documents off your local hard disk, and seamlessly upload it to Google cloud.


When you select the podcast, click on the description by the icon (at the top of the page above the Unplayed/Feed heading with an arrow that takes you to another page) and it'll give you some settings. These settings allow you to set the order in which they play.


Set up a password policy that has a maximum failed login attempts and a reset after a certain period of time

I’m assuming that you’re aware that pwpolicy doesn’t affect Admin accounts (tho it may show you otherwise, leading to believe that it does).

I also asume that you’re running the commands as sudo or at least have tried.

Other than that, I haven’t tried that value myself. As a side (and curious) note the minutesUntilFailedLoginReset is not in the manpage for pwpolicy.

man pwpolicy


If you notice, the "Sleep Now" menu entry for the AppleTV is in the lower right-hand corner of the menu system.

Here's how I do it:

Press the "menu" button several times, until you hear the different audio sound to indicate that you're at the home screen.
Press the "right" button several times, until you'd think that the cursor is over on the farthest right option.
Press the "down" button several times, until you'd think that the cursor is at the "Sleep Now" option.
Press the "middle" button.

I do this a lot when I am streaming music to the device; takes me about three seconds and it works.


Doing a clean install over the Internet

Hold down the Option+⌘+R keys at startup to boot to internet recovery. After booting to recovery mode, use the Disk Utility to erase the drive. Choose the APFS format.

Doing a clean install using a flash drive

You can also choose to download Mojave from the App Store. You can then transfer the installer to a flash drive. Afterwards, restart the Mac and hold down the Option key until the Startup Manager icons appear. Choose to boot from the flash drive. Use the Disk Utility to erase the drive. Choose the APFS format.


Does this MacBook have a screen or GPU problem?

The folder with the question mark means it cannot find a bootable system.

That said, because it can display that image, then I would think it is a screen problem - does it show signs of being bent or having dents in it...

Are you sure of your skills to do the necessary repairs or is this a "throwaway" project...


Drag with three fingers missing in OS X 10.11 Beta "El Capitan" (15A215h)

The drag gesture has migrated. It is now present in the Accessibility Preferences, Mouse & Trackpad, under Trackpad Options...


Does Apple provide a web site with content of `man` pages for the command-line commands bundled with Mac OS X?

The old online index seems have to vanished. You can however find the source code of manual pages on https://opensource.apple.com/. This site hosts historical versions as well.

For example:

fputs(3) - https://opensource.apple.com/source/Libc/Libc-1272.200.26/stdio/FreeBSD/fputs.3.auto.html
ls(1) - https://opensource.apple.com/source/file_cmds/file_cmds-272.220.1/ls/ls.1.auto.html
grep(1) - https://opensource.apple.com/source/grep/grep-28/grep/doc/grep.1.auto.html

Unfortunately there is no overview of all manual pages, so you have to manually check directory indexes or use something like site:opensource.apple.com/source "ls.1" in DuckDuckGo or Google.


Should I blow air canister over MacBook motherboard?

I use a commercial can of compressed air (versus air from your shop compressor, for example) and gently blow any and all dust from the exposed interior. I would do this before proceeding to replace the drive, especially if there is visible dust in the interior.

I pay particular attention to any cooling fans (not knowing your exact model) to blow all of the dust off the fan blades and from the ductwork. A pair of tweezers or a toothpick can be helpful to remove major dust bunnies, if any.

Try not to blow dust up into the fan spindle/seat directly, nor into your hard drive or Superdrive (which is simply saying, be careful to blow dust OUT of things, not into them). There may be an exposed pressure port on your hard drive case (non SSD), and the mechanism and optics in the optical drive, which are not friendly to dust or too much air pressure.


How do I make the folders and files wrap on Finder in Mac OSX?

Right click in the window [not over an icon]

To one-time reorganise -
Clean Up By > [any choice]
To permanently reorganise [live updating] -
Arrange By >[anything except None]


Does the iPhone multi-task while sending email?

Yes you can. You can even close the Messaging app.


External keyboard stops working after some time on MBP 2020 (Catalina 10.15.5)

To answer my own question:
The problem is not related to either my dongle or my keyboard. The problem seems with USB 2.0 support on the MBP 2020 models.
Currently there is no fix yet (18-06-2020). See link below to an article that describes the same problem.
https://9to5mac-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/9to5mac.com/2020/06/17/users-reporting-usb-2-0-compatiblity-issues-with-2020-macbook-pro-and-macbook-air/amp/?usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA%3D&amp_js_v=0.1


I'm trying to make a service to archive a folder using tgz. I can't get this to work

The following services are installed by Entropy:

Archive as 7z
Archive as rar
Archive as tbz
Archive as tgz
Archive as zip

Setting ⇧⌃⌘A on the Archive as tgz service does create a .tgz file in Finder; however, I first had to trigger it from the Services menu in Finder before the keyboard shortcut worked. This is also where I found the Entropy icon on these services.

Note: I had to add ⇧ to ⌃⌘A because in macOS Catalina ⌃⌘A is: Make Alias

I also did not have these services on a clean built macOS Catalina system until after installing Entropy, without even running it first, these services appeared in: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services


How to show open tabs on other devices on Mac Safari?

Clearly a bug. Im guessing the bug is in iCloud.
Apple's documentation says it should work the way you were doing it:
https://support.apple.com/de-de/HT202530


keyboard shortcut is driving me crazy, how do I get rid of it?

There is already a system wide keyboard shortcut to lock your display. It's CommandControlQ for High Sierra and higher and ControlShift⏏ on other systems, to let your display go to sleep (which is effectively the same when password protected).

With this keyboard shortcuts in mind you can be sure, that they don't interfere with any application.

Note that on newer MacsBook Pros with Touch ID only the first keyboard shortcut works.


How to disable auto-exposure adjusting for my webcam?

I use Webcam Settings which works fine for me on Big Sur (although not specifically updated for it yet), but I use an external webcam.
I'm not sure if it would work for you or not. It does provide some controls for the built-in webcam on my M1 MacBook Air.
It sells for $8 on the US version of the Mac App Store, and you could always request a refund if it did not work (although this is a clear example of a case where it would be helpful if Apple allowed for demo apps on the Mac App Store, that does not seem like something they are ever going to do).


How to disable Mac's generic Option-Command-W?

If you want to change the keyboard shortcut for Close All on the File menu of Google Chrome, this can be does in: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts
Click the [+] button and fill in the sheet that appears.
For this example, I changed it to: ⌥⌘/


Why is there no difference between 2 differently capitalized folders?

History. Backwards compatibility. Customer preference.

Historical Apple, and other, filesystems were not always case-sensitive. HFS+ and now APFS have such capability. That is, they can be case sensitive or insensitive, depending on how it was formatted.

If you are using macOS to manipulate file and folders on a case-insensitive file system macOS will prevent creating same-named files even though their displayed names can include both cases.

Experiment by plugging in flash drives formatted in different filesystems (FAT, ext3, etc) to easily test this behavior.


AppleScript read and trigger other script base on received notification

This following AppleScript code should work if you save it as a “stay open” application.  Just set the property values for scriptToRun and lookForThisText and it should be good to go.
Don’t forget to grant permissions in System Preferences for your new stay open application to control your computer
property scriptToRun : (path to desktop as text) & "your.scpt" -- your path to .scpt file
property lookForThisText : "Search For This Text In Notification Windows" -- your search term
property theseTitles : {}

on idle
    getNotificationTitles()
    delay 0.1
    if theseTitles contains lookForThisText then
        ---------------------------------------------------------------
        delay 6 -- Gives Banner Time To Self Close
        --tell current application to beep 5 -- Just For Testing
        run script alias scriptToRun
        ---------------------------------------------------------------
    end if
    return 1 -- in seconds
end idle

on quit
    --  Executed when the script quits
    continue quit -- allows the script to quit
end quit

on getNotificationTitles()
    -- This Gets The Titles Of The Currently Displaying Notification Alerts And Banners
    tell application id "com.apple.SystemEvents"
        tell (the first process whose bundle identifier = "com.apple.notificationcenterui")
            set theseWindows to every window whose subrole is ¬
                "AXNotificationCenterAlert" or subrole is "AXNotificationCenterBanner"
            set theseTitles to {}
            repeat with thisWindow in theseWindows
                set titleText to the value of static text 1 of thisWindow
                set the end of theseTitles to titleText
                set subTitleText to the value of static text 1 of scroll area 1 of thisWindow
                set the end of theseTitles to subTitleText
                set notificationText to the value of static text 2 of scroll area 1 of thisWindow
                set the end of theseTitles to notificationText
            end repeat
        end tell
    end tell
end getNotificationTitles

Here is a quick animation showing the process in action.  I created an AppleScript app named Test Notification.app whose only purpose is to display a notification… display notification "Blah" with title "BLAH BLAH" subtitle "DUH” Then, using the code I used as the answer to this post, I created a “Stay Open Application”, whose only purpose is to monitor all incoming notification windows for the text in which I define in the variable lookForThisText.  Once the text is identified, it triggers another script "Merge Every Finder Window.scpt" which as the name says… merges every Finder window.


Is is possible to get audio notifications working for subfolders for Apple Mail on macos?

As best I can tell, the "New messages sound" setting in Mail -> Preferences -> General is not related to the "New message notifications" setting.
So it does not appear to be possible to turn on audio notifications on/off for subfolders. The audio notification only can happen when an email lands in the inbox.


Changing Webcam Feed from EpocCam to Built-In Webcam

See https://www.kinoni.com/support-and-instructions/#Uninstallation for details on how to uninstall EpocCam.

Run provided uninstall script from Terminal:
sudo /Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/EpocCamPlugIn.plugin/Contents/Resources/uninst.sh

If the script does not work you can also type the following commands
in Terminal:
launchctl unload /Library/LaunchAgents/com.kinoni.epoccam.daemon.plist
sudo launchctl stop com.kinoni.epoccam.daemon
sudo launchctl remove com.kinoni.epoccam.daemon
sudo rm -r /Library/LaunchAgents/com.kinoni.epoccam.daemon.plist
sudo rm -r /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/VirtualMic.driver
sudo rm -r /Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/EpocCamPlugin.plugin


Use OSX Mail from Panther (10.3) with iCloud email address

In 2018, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla deprecated TLS 1.0 and 1.1 effective March of 2020. TLS 1.2 was created in 2008, and thus postdates Panther.
Unfortunately, this seems to imply that Mac OS X Mail in Panther does not support the security protocols currently required to access iCloud mail servers, or any other modern web server requiring a secure connection.


Mac Yosemite : Can I recover directories deleted via rm -rf

The short answer: No.
The long answer: You could try to use data recovery utilities on the drive, as it generally just marks the space as freed for other things to rewrite over.


Apparently there is a hidden button in the elements tab that toggles the rulers.


Is there there an iOS equivalent of Android's "Delete app storage"?

Not really - On iOS, deleting the app only deletes the data in its sandbox. If the developer doesn’t offer this toggle in the settings app (or you don’t trust the developer to actually wipe the data) you might have a problem if you expect all traces to be removed.
The problem is apps store data in a lot of places that aren’t the app sandbox. Look at keychain, cloud and application group stores for places where “data the developer really doesn’t want you to delete” can persist.
In the case where the app uses a group data entitlement, that data will persist and one app can participate in more than one group. A very notable version of this is Microsoft Office suite of iOS apps - they all share one group container so deleting an app doesn’t necessarily delete that data. Licensing and identity is stored in the group area, but individual data (Word / Excel / Outlook) is still stored within the app bundle so deleting Word, deletes the Word-specific data, but not some data relating to Office (licensing and identity and certificates for example).
So, no - sandboxing is different on iOS and there’s not an OS setting to wipe as a direct analog to how Android implements this. You’ll need to consider each app, whether it syncs to iCloud data store, to another data store or a group container to achieve your needs.


ssh-keygen -R saying (wrongly) no matches found

The problem was actually the zsh shell. Given the [xxx.xxx.xx.xxx]:yyyyy syntax, zsh was interpreting the []s as a globbing pattern. That's why I was getting a "zsh: no matches found" error.
In the old Bash shell, this isn't a problem, and the command I gave runs perfectly.
The solution in zsh is to quote the whole hostname, like this:
ssh-keygen -R "[xxx.xxx.xx.xxx]:yyyyy"


If you can consider switching to the U.S layout, it's identical on Mac and Windows in terms of the positions of ASCII characters.

I don't know if there's a premade French PC layout, but you can also use Ukelele to create your own one:

Select File > New From Current Input Source
Change the keys
Save as bundle to /Library/Keyboard Layouts/ (the popovers shown when holding keys don't work with normal .keylayout files, and keyboard layouts in ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts/ can't be selected in password dialogs or the login window)
Log out and back in and enable the input source in System Preferences > Language & Text > Input Sources

To apply changes to a keylayout, you have to run sudo touch /Library/Keyboard Layouts/ (or modify the folder some other way) and log out and back in. You can disable the default French input source by editing the com.apple.HIToolbox plist.

Another option would be to use KeyRemap4MacBook:

You can customize the setting group by copying it from the source to private.xml.


How can I upgrade my mac to OpenJDK 11 using Homebrew?

Recommended commands to install OpenJDK 11 from AdoptOpenJDK (with notes after the # sign):

brew tap adoptopenjdk/openjdk # assuming this tap was not already added
brew cask install adoptopenjdk11 # this command *may* need a password to succeed

Note that OpenJDK as used by AdoptOpenJDK is open source under GPL v2 license with a Classpath exception.

This answer assumes that a recent version of Homebrew is installed, with brew cask install enabled and working.

At this point, assuming that no newer version of Java or Java JDK is installed, java -version shows me openjdk version "11.0.3" and javac --version shows me javac 11.0.3 (with no JAVA_HOME environment variable in use). The following commands show both JDK versions installed:

/usr/libexec/java_home -V
ls /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines

To install latest version of OpenJDK from AdoptOpenJDK:

brew tap adoptopenjdk/openjdk # (if not already added)
brew cask install adoptopenjdk # (*may* need a password to succeed)

Alternative installation of OpenJDK from download.oracle.com - with no AdoptOpenJDK tap needed:

To install OpenJDK 11 from download.oracle.com:

brew cask install java11 # (*may* need a password to succeed)

To install most recent OpenJDK version from download.oracle.com:

brew cask install java # (*may* need a password to succeed)

Here is the source of the java cask: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/blob/master/Casks/java.rb

To find related packages on Homebrew:

brew search jdk (shows both AdoptOpenJDK and the Oracle JDK)
brew search java (see notes below)

According to this article, newer versions of Java JDK from Oracle are under GPL v2 license with a Classpath exception (they seemed to link to the same page on the non-https site).

Note that some previous java packages such as java8 are still using Oracle JDK instead of OpenJDK. How to install and verify an older OpenJDK version using AdoptOpenJDK is described in: How can I install java openjdk 8 on High Sierra


Switch between windows (not applications) in both directions

Another possible option for you is to use Mission Control.

Mission Control shows all windows as overlays on your screen. You can also set your Mission Control preferences (Apple > System Preferences > Mission Control) to group windows by application.

By default you can access Mission Control by pressing the Mission Control key (usually the F3 key - see image below), or pressing the control + ⬆ keyboard shortcut, although this may depend on how you've configured your shortcuts in System Preferences.

If you're using a MacBook and/or trackpad you can also access Mission Control by swiping up with three fingers.

For more information you can refer to Use Mission Control on your Mac.

Note: The feedback I've had from users is that it takes a little while to get used to, but that it's well worth persisting. So I recommend you stick with it for a little while to see if it works for you.


Deleting formula sources without destroying formula output, using Numbers for Mac

Select the columns with the data that you want to preserve.
Choose Copy from the Edit menu (or hit Command ⌘+C).
Choose Paste Formula Results from the Edit menu (or hit Shift ⇧+Command ⌘+V).

You should end up with just the results of the formula.


I'm pretty sure the Mouse and Keyboard preference panes are per-user settings: if one user logs in and changes settings, a different user's login shouldn't be affected.

If you still want to disable the preference panes, check out Diablotin. You can use that to disable preference panes (among other things) and it can be locked with a password.


The draggable icon in the title bar is not gone in Big Sur, just hidden.
To display it, simply place the mouse over the document name for a second, and it will appear. Hold shift to remove the delay before the icon appears.

When the icon is visible, you can drag it to another folder as you desire.
Note that it is not necessary that the icon be visible if you just want to display the full path to the file. Either right-click the document title, or click the title while pressing the command key and it will appear instantly:


Where is Chrome Extension's Setting Files/Databases?

~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Extensions is for the static extension files only. Storage space for Extensions is found in ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Local Storage:

IanCsiMac:~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Local Storage |ruby-2.1.2|
> ls | grep redditenhancement
http_redditenhancementsuite.com_0.localstorage
http_redditenhancementsuite.com_0.localstorage-journal


Change HD in Macbook Pro Retina Display 13" - SSD 250GB

Changing a SSD for a larger one is usually pretty easy. I have done it myself via a kit OWC (macsales.com) sells. We also use cruical.com at work and buy SSDs from them. As for brands and make/model... I've always shopped price as HD/SSD are all made by about 5-6 companies and all are good and should work with any Mac that supports SATA.

You will find good instructions at ifixit.com so you know what you are in for (you may possibly need some specialized "screwdrivers." That guide will tell you.

However as you seem to be in the UK I am unsure if these places sell overseas and/or will be price competitive with a reseller in the UK.

Regardless iFixit is a great resource and will help regardless of where you get the drive.


Can’t pair Magic Keyboard due to numerical keys not working

You should able to connect the keyboard to your Mac with a lightning cable. When you unplug it again, it should be paired. Note that it won’t be listed as (Bluetooth) paired whilst connected with a cable, but it should still be usable in that state.
Once paired, you can rename it in the Bluetooth settings.


AppleScript: How to get the character count of an .rtf file?

You asked, "What is the best way to go about this?" and while I'll not make that determination, nonetheless, here's an example using the do shell script command and some command line utilities.

set theRichTextFile to quoted form of "/path/to/filename.rtf"
set theCharacterCount to do shell script "textutil -stdout -convert txt " & theRichTextFile & " | LANG=en_US.UTF-8 wc -m | sed 's/ //g'"

Note that theRichTextFile must be a quoted POSIX pathname.

Update: Per comment by @jackjr300, added LANG=en_US.UTF-8 to the command.


Is there a Broswer on Ipad capable of "Add a Keyword for this Search" (or Quick Searches) feature?

I've used the Cliqz browser on my iPad and it works well. It has a quick search feature but maybe different from the one you describe. Cliqz is free and available from the app store.


T2 chip in newer Macs needs to recognize the boot media to allow it to start from that disk. You might be able to tell the system to use the drive as a startup volume if you can log in first with sufficient privileges (Preferences --> Startup Disk). Workaround? Boot to recovery partition, open Disk Utility, and do a secure wipe of the drive, using highest stringency options. Accomplishes the same thing (7 pass U.S. Department of Defense 5220-22-M compliant wipe) without the need to run DBAN. Also leaves the machine in a recoverable state so that the next user can install from the recovery partition, which is far faster than Internet Recovery (and in some cases, DBAN wipes the recovery partition, which makes reinstalling incredibly painful depending on the machine - I spent several days repairing an old Air after our IT folks used a DBAN equivalent to wipe it - even worse, this happened AFTER I had already run a full wipe from disk utility - the DBAN wipe wasn't even needed at that point!)


1Password started as OS X-only, so it's more popular among long-time Mac/iOS users. Their Mac/iOS support should (theoretically) be better because it's their original platform.

That said, I use LastPass on OS X and iOS (and, occasionally, Windows and WebOS) and I'm quite happy with it. I haven't heard of any one cloud password management being significantly particularly better than its competitors nowadays.


How does iOS AppStore handle multiple version targeting different version of iOS?

I think when you upload an application, App Store save the version of the app, for example - Version 1.0 for iOS 7. And when you update the app to 2.0( for example ), and this version is for iOS 8, the user that use iOS 7 ( like iPhone 4 ) it will get a message like this


Put Macbook Pro to sleep with HDMI connected to External Monitor?

Your MacBook Pro can't go to sleep completely as you're using it, however, since you're using it in  "Clamshell mode" (with the lid shut) the internal display will have been powered down (you can tell as the logo on the lid will no longer be lit).

If you want to put the machine to sleep while it's in Clamshell mode, just press Ctrl-Eject on the keyboard you're using and the prompt for putting it to sleep will appear (the specific key sequence is Ctrl-Eject followed by 'S').  You can also put it to sleep via the Apple menu in the top left.


Can I take a hard drive from an iPod Video and put it in an older iPod?

Probably not.

You might have "form factor" issues, for one. But also, the two devices probably have different hardware, thus the software on the drives is probably incompatible.

Assuming that you don't have problem #1 (form factor), you'd still need to find a way to copy the image from the "older black-and-white iPod" over the 80GB drive before installing it back into the good iPod.

I think there are guides out there for this, but you're going to have to look around. I would start at the awesome DIY Fix-It site: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide

Otherwise, you may want to consider getting your iPod Video repaired: http://www.ipodrepair.com/


Apple Mail 6.2 - Turn OFF automatic checking for new messages

I think by design when you open a mail box it is gonna check for new mail when you open it. ( or even when you open the app and open another mailbox not sure )

To turn checking of those accounts really off you need to uncheck "Enable this account"

But then you won't be able to to access the disabled accounts not sure if that's what your looking for.

Maybe a better option is to move to a different email client? or at least those accounts you don't want to check? There are some clients available I personally like sparrow but there are a lot of other clients available.


Have you looked into software like TouchCopy to transfer the videos? It offers a Windows and Mac version. I prefer PhoneView to this software on a Mac, but you have tagged this windows so TouchCopy seems a better fit.


How do I hyperlink 'text' within a note in the macOS Notes app?

It's quite simple – just highlight the text you want to make a hyperlink of, press ⌘K, and then paste the link in.


iTunes 11: Viewing albums by Date Added?

Yes, just right click on the top of the list, where it says Album, Artist, etc, and check 'Date Added'. This doesn't work in the album art view, but does work in the list view (the first two options).

This should work by song (its how the Recently Added playlist works), but most of my music is added by an album or single.


Is it possible to maximize a Finder window without third-party software?

Move the mouse to the corner of the window where it becomes a resizing arrow and option double-click to fill the screen.
A double-click on any side or corner will move that side/corner to the edge of the screen. Adding option will affect the opposite side as well.


What is this "Shared" in Finder's Sidebar?

System preferences > Sharing

You can choose what to share and with what conditions. You can share files with other devices connected to your network, but they have to know your UserID and password, you can share printers and many other functionalities.

Obviously, you can choose to enable the sharing or not just checking the "services" on the left sidebar. If you disable everything, your "shared" folder will not be accessible.


Using Mac OS X 10.9 lsof launches 5 to 10 processes at a time on its own taking all cpu

I had the same problem, and quitting the Adobe Acrobat update fixed the issue.


How can I prevent stuck keys when VNC into OS X El Capitan loses focus?

Best solution I've found is to click the blank space in the menu bar, and often.  The left Alt key is mapped to command on my Mac from this PC, and I'll Alt-tab in windows or in my viewer and the Alt key sticks, so all clicks are Command-clicks in the Mac.  So I quite often just Alt-click the menu bar to clear that stuck key.


Multiple League of Legends Icons on Dock

macOS Mojave has a configuration to show recently used application icon in the Dock. In order to disable it, uncheck Show recent applications in Dock under System Preferences → Dock.

Application with support for opening documents minimize into Dock in their own separate icon. To disable that behavior, check to Minimise windows into application icon under System Preferences → Dock.


Apple will replace it for $129 US (price varies by country), or you can do it yourself, following iFixit's guide. However iFixit lists a used 2010/2011 MacBook Air battery for $99 US, and if you mess up anything doing the repair, it won't be covered under warranty. If I were you, I'd spend the extra $30 and have Apple do it.
It's also worth noting that Apple has improved battery durability considerably over the past few years (I think ever since they went with the "non-removeable" batteries). From Apple.com:

The built-in battery of your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air is designed to deliver up to 1000 full charge and discharge cycles before it reaches 80 percent of its original capacity.

One "cycle" is a full discharge and recharge - so going from 100% to 0%. Or Going 100% to 50% twice.
For comparison, the older batteries (and to my knowledge, most non-Apple batteries) were rated for 300 cycles. In my experience, the first 300 cycles on my MacBook Pro took about 2 to 3 years of pretty heavy use (you can keep track in the System Information app, under the Power section). 1000 cycles should last the usable life of an Air, unless you're in the 99th percentile of hard use.


Cached restored files and their logs after the force shutdown (crash). Where are they?

Some of the files used in restoring applications are located at ~/Library/Saved Application State. These files are updated while an application is running, and if it crashes they are used by the system to restore it (if the application crashes during the restore process, OS X offers to discard the saved state when relaunching a second time).

But some applications such as Chrome store more information elsewhere. Chrome stores your open tabs and other data in
~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default. There I see files such as Last Session and Last Tabs. (For comparison, Safari uses ~/Library/Safari/LastSession.plist.)


Keynote on the iPad does not to the projector (VGA output)?

we called Apple they said we need to re-set the iPad


How can I clear the kernel extension caches while using FileVault 2?

Holding down cmdS at boot time, for a boot drive that's FileVault 2 encrypted, presents the password dialog, then continues into Safe Mode.


If you have disabled two finger swipes between pages in trackpad preferences then you should be able to configure it in BetterTouchTool by assigning keyboard shortcuts for those gestures. Swipes are generally fast and scrolls are generally slow. So you should be able to get both working side by side.

You can disable all scrolls if it really bothers you from accessibility section. In recent versions of OS X, disabling only horizontal scrolling is no more an option for built-in trackpad. Check this.


Mac El Capitan Spotlight XPC Connection Invalidated

Based on your question and the subsequent conversation where you provided the SMART Status of your internal drive, your hard drive is failing and causing the issue you are experiencing.

You need to replace your hard drive.  The good news is that it is not very expensive.

Your Macbook which identified by DriveDX as a MacBookPro9,2 (Mid 2012) uses a standard SATA drive and you can upgrade to an SSD and increase your performance dramatically pretty inexpensively (at the time of this, they are trending about $150 USD).  I have used Samsung drives with great success.  Changing it out only requires removing 10 phillips screws.

I have more info on how to do this on this post:  My Mac is getting really slow, what should I do?

IMO, I would keep this running for a few more year because Apple has now made it impossible to upgrade your RAM or HDD meaning you must configure it with what you hope you are going to need in the future.


Cannot connect to public Wi-Fi: "a problem occurred"

Using Cmd + Spacebar, Open System Preferences -> Network -> Wifi -> Advanced -> DNS

In the DNS section, remove all the DNS addresses and search domains and apply the new settings, so that the public wifi could use the one that it is configured with.


Using Automator to take a screen shot from Adobe Digital Editions, Page Down and repeat

Yes, this is possible.

You can use with Script Editor.app or Automator.app for your task. If you choose Automator.app, using the Run AppleScript action to embed your AppleScript snippets.

AppleScript: Simulating key presses

Take a look at using AppleScript to automate key presses, How do I automate a key press in AppleScript? An example from the top answer:

delay 0.5 -- time to release modifier keys if for example the script is run with command-R
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Adobe Digital Editions"
    try
        key down option
        delay 0.1
        click menu bar item 1 of menu bar 1
    end try
    key up option
end tell

AppleScript: Capturing screen shots

To take a screen shot, there are numerous approaches. This question is a good starting point, Take a screen shot and save to desktop with current time as the name:

set theDesktop to POSIX path of (path to desktop as string)
set theCurrentDate to current date
set shellCommand to "/usr/sbin/screencapture " & quoted form of (theDesktop & "Screen Shot" & theCurrentDate & ".png")
do shell script shellCommand

AppleScript: Mouse clicks

Simulating the mouse is trickier but likely possible, see Is there a way to simulate a mouse click anywhere on a screen in Dictate ?. AppleScript's GUI scripting is designed to interact with specific elements on the screen.

Aside: Copyright concerns

Please do not use this process to bypass copyright protection.


Ability to automatically dim secondary monitor when focus on primary

I started using the free app HazeOver which dims all windows other than the one with focus. The new beta version has a preference to dim all windows on a secondary monitor, and it gives me exactly the functionality I need. You can also opt to not dim windows that belong to the app in focus.  (I paid for it, which just removes messages encouraging you to purchase it).


This solved the problem for me:

Reset the NVRAM using Cmd+Opt+P+R after startup chime.
Boot into safe mode by pressing Shift after the startup chime.
Optionally, take a backup if you don't already have one. I disabled FileVault at this point so I can take backup using a disk image. Not necessary.
Install the updates and let it complete.

Credits: Stuart H


Formatted APFS in Mojave shows file format in system report as MS-DOS

Everything is fine as the EFI volume is supposed to be formatted MS-DOS FAT32, and as you can see your disk0s2 volume is as should be Apple_APFS.


Compare multi-digit version numbers in bash

I believe I adapted this slightly from http://bashscripts.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1248. I like it because it's fairly compact and readable.

This is optional, but desirable IMO:

if [ "$#" != "2" ]
then
    echo "$0 requires exactly two arguments."
    exit 2
fi

Here's the meat:

I always use $1 for "the locally installed version" and $2 for "the version I am comparing against" so if this leaves me with $? = 1 I need to update, otherwise I'm up-to-date (or even ahead):

function version { echo "$@" | awk -F. '{ printf("%d%03d%03d%03d\n", $1,$2,$3,$4); }'; }

if [ $(version $1) -gt $(version $2) ]; then
    echo "$1 is newer than $2"
    exit 0
elif [ $(version $1) -lt $(version $2) ]; then
    echo "$1 is older than $2"
    exit 1
else
    echo "$1 is identical to $2"
    exit 0
fi

If all you cared about was whether $1 was up to date (that is, equal to or greater than $2) you could make it even simpler:

if [ $(version $1) -ge $(version $2) ]; then
    echo "No Newer Version Available"
    exit 0
fi

Any code below that will only be executed if there is a newer version available. Otherwise the script will exit cleanly at that point.

p.s.: I do this in /bin/zsh not /bin/bash but I don't think it makes a difference in this case.


Setting a variable to the result of a terminal command within an applescript

try:

set dontEject to {"Mac OS X", "Time Machine", "Media", "home", "net"}
set myDisks to list disks

repeat with aDisk in myDisks
    if aDisk is not in dontEject then tell application "Finder" to eject aDisk
end repeat


How many lithium-ion batteries does a M1 MacBook Air (2020) have?

The answer is zero batteries in the adapter and the assembled laptop qualifies as UN 3481 product for shipping purposes.

The M1 Air has a built-in 49.9‑watt‑hour lithium‑polymer battery, so it falls under UN 3481, Section II IMP:ELI

To elaborate, you are shipping a computer (portable electronic equipment) that contains one battery with multiple cells and this assembly is regulated differently than loose batteries included in a box (or spare parts for repair of an Air).
Here is the relevant section from a 30 page guide from UPS.  Ask your carrier how they define portable electronic equipment if you are not sure if the shipping standard I have quoted doesn’t govern EMS website or staff.

https://www.ups.com/media/en/lithium_batteries_guidance.pdf


Access photos only from select albums on all my devices

I guess I was halfway stuck between an older way of doing things (sync) and a newer (cloud). The older way still offers selecting individual albums (e.g. for the two faces) for syncing between two devices.

Photos apparently still makes lots of mistakes in assigning photos to albums (as is its want) and therefore the result is still less than optimal overall, but it is probably the right way for me to go.


Add a Proxy to your computer via terminal

You can use networksetup.

See man networksetup for a full list.

Run this command via terminal.app

Example: setting http proxies.

sudo networksetup -setwebproxy Wi-Fi proxy.yourdomain 9090

sudo networksetup -setproxybypassdomains Wi-Fi website1, website2, website3

Replace Wi-Fi with the approiate service name (wifi, ethernet, ..).


Disk space not free up after photos and videos are deleted from Photos app

Your pictures didn't get deleted because they still exist in iPhoto or Aperture, whichever one you use.  As Apple says in this support article, Photos saves disk space by creating links to the already-existing files in iPhoto/Aperture, rather than duplicating them. That means that if you want to delete a file, you need to make sure it's deleted everywhere.

If you can live without ever using iPhoto/Aperture again, go to your Pictures folder and delete iPhoto Library and Aperture Library. That way, the only copies of your pictures will be the ones in Photos, and deleting them will free up space on your computer.


System keeps booting into recovery after upgrading to El Capitan

Try booting it into Recovery and use Disk Utility to verify the disk it see if we have any problems there.

Hold these keys until the Apple logo appears. After your computer finishes starting up, you should see a desktop with an OS X menu bar and an OS X Utilities window with the options listed above. If you see a login window or your own desktop instead of the Utilities window, it's possible that you didn't press Command-R early enough. Restart your computer and try again.


Arrange different external displays of same model to different positions

There is a product out there that will remember your monitor configurations - it's called Stay

From their website:

  Stay can store a set of windows for every combination of displays that you use with your computer. Stay can also be configured to automatically restore windows as displays are connected and disconnected.


iPhone 4 will charge in wall, but won't sync or charge via USB

I know, in most cases, this problem to be the usb port on the iphone. Unfortunately this part seems to be a part which only one in five of these parts to be good from experience. Either the mic or data port are defective which makes a diy repair frustrating. Most people will change it once they hit a defect part and give up. Don't give up. Trying to help people who are frustrated as I was. Usually occurs when you update with a port having bad contacts and ends up with a no sync or no voice on phone mic. May not be what you want to hear.


It's dead.
Smash it to prevent your data being stolen & throw it away.

If a write error occurs, the firmware controller will switch over to read-only mode to prevent further data loss. This is to all intents & purposes, irreversible.


Is it still possible to track a stolen iPhone 6s Plus eventhough it has already been restored to its factory settings?

Find my iPhone is a feature that cannot be disabled unless a user has the password to the iCloud account, and when the phone is in lost mode Activation Lock would kick in should someone restore the software on the device (rendering it unusable). The application being on the phone, however, does not necessarily mean that it was enabled for use. Consider the following scenarios for your phone:

The phone had Find my iPhone enabled and is powered off/no longer working
Find my iPhone was not enabled on the phone, and the thief was able to restore/wipe the device
Find my iPhone is enabled, but carrier service has already been suspended to the device, meaning it cannot get online to post its status and to check the lock/lost status

In any case, it is impossible for us to determine what chance you will have of retrieving your device. It is always recommended that you submit a police report with a high level of detail, including the phone serial number, so that it may be traced back to you should it be found. Also, should a user try to sell it to someone else or take it to a carrier for service, it's possible that they might see it is in Activation Lock and let Apple know about the device. Beyond that, it is generally considered a lost cause.


Looks like it's not possible according to the Apple pagE: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207023


You need to use a third party piece of software to send messages to the Notification Center from command line tools and scripts.

terminal-notifier appears to be a popular solution. OSXDaily has an article walking through how to set terminal-notifier up.

Alternative methods are covered in the answers to, how can I trigger a Notification Center notification from an AppleScript or shell script?