How can I disable XQuartz entirely and use Xorg with my own Desktop Environment?

If I have understood you correctly, what you actually want to do is to get rid of the Mac graphic environment, and run a "classic" X11 session instead. Correct?

I don't think you can get rid of the Mac graphic environment entirely (short of installing some other OS, like *BSD or Linux), but you can hide it to a certain extent.

Configure Xquartz to run in full-screen mode (it's in the settings somewhere...). This means you won't see any Mac stuff. Create an ~/.xinitrc file. Xquartz will run that file on start-up, just as would normally happen with startx or xinit. In that file, you can start any window manager you like. e.g. good old twm. (If you don't have an .xinitrc file, Quartz will start the quartz-wm window manager, which gives a "Mac look" to your X windows.) It should be theoretically possible to get an entire Gnome desktop running, but I have not tried that... You'll still have to boot into MacOS and log in to a Mac desktop, but after you have started Xquartz, you should be back in familiar X11 land.

(I get the impression that you believe Xquartz is the standard graphic Mac environment. It isn't. Xquartz is an X server that runs on top of the Mac graphic environment. I think Xquartz is just a packaging of the Xorg server, built for macOS, but I could be wrong on that.)


How can I manipulate several security settings from terminal?

1) Auto-login

That one is tricky. The default is saved in

defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow autoLoginUser

But in order to turn it on or off, you need to do it as root.

Set it:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow autoLoginUser ShortName

Delete it (turn it off):

sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow autoLoginUser

2) Showing password after screensaver and sleep mode

I've been trying to get that one to work, and I can't

You will see a lot of hints telling you that the answer is

defaults write com.apple.screensaver askForPassword 1

or variations like

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver askForPassword -int 1

and that should work, because if you turn it off via System Preferences, you will see:

% defaults read com.apple.screensaver
{
    askForPassword = 0;
    askForPasswordDelay = 0;
    tokenRemovalAction = 0;
}

and then if you turn it back on via System Preferences, you will see

% defaults read com.apple.screensaver
{
    askForPassword = 1;
    askForPasswordDelay = 0;
    tokenRemovalAction = 0;
}

BUT if turn it OFF and the quit System Preferences and change the setting using 'defaults write', when I re-launch System Preferences, it does not reflect that change.

I'd really like to know the answer to that one (preferably without osascript, but if there is no other way, I'll accept it).

3) Go to sleep mode after x minutes

Assuming you mean "have the computer go to sleep after x minutes" you want:

sudo pmset sleep 20

You can also use different settings specifically for when you are on battery (for MacBooks):

sudo pmset -b sleep 10

If you want to specify never sleeping when plugged in, use

sudo pmset -c sleep 0

4) Enable screensaver after x minutes

@Daniel's recommendation worked for me:

sudo osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to set delay interval of screen saver preferences to 30'

You can use 'sudo pmset displaysleep X' to have the display sleep instead of using the screensaver.


Non native 3rd-party apps not loading on Apple Watch

I have just found an unusual solution to this problem:

Deleting all music from the Settings app on the iPhone and then soft resetting both devices solved the issue.


Upgraded to iOS 9.0.1 and lost all health weight data

Backups don't backup health data unless they're encrypted backups.

Thus, if you restore one of these unencrypted backups, you won't restore the health data. This data is gone—it's not stored in iCloud for privacy reasons.


Open the Settings app > iTunes&App Stores. Check to see if automatic downloads are turned on for iBooks. If so, turn it off.


How to access USB External Drive on iMac from Macbook Pro?

I've realised that all the time the external drive is NTFS file system, it won't share it, but as soon as I formatted it to Mac OS Journalled FS, it appeared straight away.


How to transfer MKV file from Windows PC to iPad Mini

Do not bother with conversion. Install the free video players like VLC or PlayerXtreme and upload the videos via wifi directly to the apps.

EDIT: Alternatively, and also must faster for large files, both apps allow transfers via iTunes. If you don't use iTunes read on...

For example, once installed you enable Wifi Transfers...

Then from your browser you go to the address shown and upload the files...


Saving my all iMessage conversations to Windows 10

I use iExplorer, which is available for macOS and for Windows. Among other highly useful things, it can export the contents of Messages, including images. It it not a free app, but I've used it so many times that it has paid for itself (US$39.99) many times over.

Disclaimer: Satisfied user - not affiliated in any way with Macroplant LLC.


No spoken Siri feedback with Shortcuts actions

Shortcuts allows for this, but not with the default Siri voice.

In order to add speech into your Shortcut, you need to add two objects into your script.

First: "Text".
Second: "Speak Text".

The following screenshot should help. Alter the contents of the Text box to your liking, and tweak the language, speed and rate to your liking in Speak Text. Hope this helps!


Found it! Was missing a delay.

tell application "System Events"
    key code 21 using {shift down, command down}
    delay 0.1
    key code 49
end tell

Then assign to a keyboard shortcut using Alfred, Quicksilver or other similar application.


Why does my iphone weirdly autocorrect any in-app text field when I type out my email with '@@@'?

I would check your setting app first.

General > Keyboard > Text Replacement

Using @@ to expand to your primary email and using @@@ for a secondary and so on is common practice. Perhaps you set that up, but in reverse. I believe I heard that from a podcast or some blog post a while back but cannot recall. I have adopted that shortcut and it’s super handy.

Here is a blog crediting Rene Ritchie and the author, Patrick Welker, for the general awareness and specific use case of multiple @ to represent emails respectively.

http://rocketink.net/2014/09/ios-@@-shortcut.html
http://m.imore.com/how-to-setup-text-keyboard-shortcuts-iphone-ipad-ios

Yours turning the actual mail into a shortcut, not so much useful.


I'm not sure how to prevent the creation of the credentials in the first place, but you can remove items from the Keychain using the security command, which is easily scriptable.
The command you want is security delete-internet-password -s server, where server is the hostname or address of the proxy server without the protocol (i.e. 192.168.0.1, not https://192.168.0.1). Alternatively you can use -l label to match the name of the keychain item, or various other search parameters, which you can find detailed on the man page.
You can have this command run at logout for each user by saving it as an executable script in a location readable by all users (make sure the file is executable for all users as well). Then run sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LogoutHook /path/to/script.


Thunderbolt 3 compatible with Apple Thunderbolt Display

Looking at the Thunderbolt 3 FAQ, it states the following which should apply to all Thunderbolt-labeled Display Port displays.

  Thunderbolt 3 ports are fully compatible with DisplayPort devices and cables.

and

  Products built to Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 specifications will work with Thunderbolt 3 via an adapter.


Can I use the iPad Camera Kit to move photos onto an SD card?

you can read this nice article of what can you do with such connector

in sum, you can:

Attach USB Keyboards
USB Audio Devices (like an usb wireless headphones)
Attach a USB Microphone
Removing Items from a Camera or SD Card
Importing Photos from your iPhone or iPod touch
External Hard Drive Support (Jailbreak hack needed)
USB Hubs - Multi-device hookup


What is the feature called that brings you to the file name by typing the first few letters?

It is called as 'Code completion' feature or 'Typing intelligence'.


OSX 10.7 Lion was not sold on DVD, the first retail OSX version to do so. You can obtain it through three methods:

Update your system to 10.6.8 (combo update is best via Apple, or Software Update if you like) and then, using the Mac App Store, purchase a copy of Lion
Purchase Lion via the Apple Store website which will email you a download redemption code for Lion: http://store.apple.com/us/product/D6106Z/A/os-x-lion
Use eBay or another website to purchase an official Lion USB key, released for those who cannot download the product. Check with the various sellers to see if they deliver to your location.


What's option-drag in Display Arrangement do?

Holding down the Option key allows the currently dragged display to be dropped on top of another display to enable mirroring.

The dragged display still snaps to the edges of the other displays at first, but if you drag further towards the center, the displays can be made to overlap and this turns on the "Mirror Displays" checkbox.


Open a web page in Google Chrome without activating it

There may have been a time when Google Chrome was compliant with AppleScript commands e.g. run or launch, which would keep it in the background, as it does with e.g. Safari and other applications. Or compliant with with the shell open command using either the -g or -j options along with the -a option.
In testing under macOS Catalina I could not get Google Chrome to consistently open in the background and only with the open command with -jga would it open in the background a few different times, but not at all consistently.
Google clearly is not conforming to the macOS norms!
That said, the only way I could consistently open a URL in Google Chrome in the background was is if it was already running with an open window in the background.
I'll post the example AppleScript code just for you to test if it works for you as it did for me.
set myURL to "https://www.example.com"

if running of application "Google Chrome" then
    tell application "Google Chrome"
        if window 1 exists then
            tell window 1
                make new tab
                repeat while (loading of active tab)
                    delay 0.1
                end repeat
                execute active tab javascript "document.location.href = '" & myURL & "';"
            end tell
        end if
    end tell
end if


Do 2.5" SATA HDDs in an external enclosure need extra power over USB with Windows?

What is the exact make and model of external enclosure you are using? Some of them require an external AC adaptor. Some of them come with a duplex (two-headed) USB cable and require that both of them be plugged in to powered USB sources to provide enough voltage to run the enclosure and the drive.

Of course it is possible that your hard drive itself is damaged. If that is the case, you will need to pay a lot of money to a specialty hard disk data recovery service.

Finally, do you not already have a Time Machine backup of your Mac's internal hard drive to an external disk drive? When this current situation is resolved, it would be wise to invest in an external backup system using Time Machine.

UPDATE:

Have you tried this drive in a different external enclosure? until you do that, you can't rule out that it's the external enclosure's problem and not the drive's problem.


Turning on/off Airplane mode on iPhone X from a desktop computer

libimobiledevice (and technically, usbmuxd as well), like you mentioned, is the functional equivalent of adb in the iOS world, in the sense that it allows you to communicate with your iOS devices over USB.

libimobiledevice doesn't  provide any API that I know of which allows you to toggle Airplane mode.

However, what you can use is UI Automation on an iOS device. You can create a script which would simulate a user opening the Settings app and toggling Airplane Mode.

If your machine is a Mac, you can use Appium (a framework which builds on top of UI Automation). In Appium, you'll first have to create a test automation session, and then toggle Airplane mode. There is sample code on the Internet which explains how you can do this.

If your machine is not a Mac, you can still use Appium but with a twist - you can use commercial tools like Appium Studio, Quamotion WebDriver or xcuitrunner.


My syntax rules were being overwritten by later files in the load order, for some reason this happens now when it didn't before. The solution was to copy my .vimrc into ~/.vim/after/syntax/syncolor.vim (the filename matters too apparently)


How do I restart my iPhone and why should I?

You can restart the iPhone by holding the power button and home button for about 5 seconds (until you see the apple logo pop onto the screen). You may have to do this if the phone freezes, or otherwise becomes unresponsive.
http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/assistant/phone/#section_2


Running the command   /sbin/fsck –fy   initiates a file system consistency check utility which should scan your system and attempt to repair any issues, this scan is documented to take approximately 15 minutes and should not be interrupted.

You should restart your computer, press the power button, and then immediately press and hold the  Command + S  keys as the computer starts up.  This will boot you into Single-user mode and you should see white text on the screen.  Now run the fsck utility and wait.

When it's done it should prompt you with the message "File System was modified" or "No problems were found".  If you see the first message, you should repeat the entire process over and over again until you receive the "No problems were found" message.  This may take 3 or more times of repeating the process.

If after 5 times you still do not get the No problems were found prompt then your last hope is to attempt a Disk Repair.

Find a OSX install disc, and insert it, restart, holding down the  C  key to boot to the disc.  Once it starts up, navigate to the Disk Utility application which will be found in one of the drop down menu's along the top of the window.

Within the Disk Utility application select your drive and run the Repair Disk command.  Run it repeatedly until it responds that no errors needed to be repaired.

If it still doesn't work, buy a new hard-drive.


Looking for suggestions on scheduling iCloud Photo Library uploads

It's a bit complex but here's a way.

How to Throttle iCloud Photo Library Uploads


How do I open a generic URL from AppleScript?

If myscheme is properly registered in the Launch Services Database to open a particular application, then you can use the open location command, which: "Opens a URL with the appropriate program."

Use as in the following examples:

set theURL to "myscheme://a/b/c"

open location theURL

Or directly:

open location "myscheme://a/b/c"

Have a look at the AppleScript Language Guide and more specifically, the open location command.


TextWrangler was always a feature-subset of the paid, full-featured BBEdit, from barebones.
Without a paid license, BBEdit runs just like TextWrangler & is a direct replacement for it.

Same maker, same look, same feature-set, opens all your saved documents, runs without an added license. The only action you need to do is install the app.

Ref: BBEdit FAQs for TextWrangler Customers


The Mavericks Contacts.app has settings were you can set/decide which one and where from the contacts come from.

Open Contacts and look on left site to see what you have set up there.

Also look at your settings in Contacts-Accounts to see what you have set up there.


How not to have click twice to pause youtube videos

You can ⌘ CMD+Click on pause button. By default ⌘ CMD+Click does not activate window under the click.


iPad Pages: replacing the wood effect theme

If your device is jailbroken, I assume you can modify files within an app's bundle? I haven't jailbroken my device, so I'm not sure exactly how this works. However, if you have:

Within the Pages bundle, there are images called TP_RulerBackground.png and TP_toolbar_top_bg_norm.png. If you replace these files with something else, it'll change the toolbars/rulers.


Website that uses iPhoto or Photos library as the database

Have you considered using iCloud Photo Sharing?

This can be used to share specific photo albums, so you could create one for each of the four categories. You can also share these as a public website so that people who aren't part of Apple's ecosystem can also view them.

For more information refer to: iCloud Photo Sharing.

NOTE: One limitation you should be aware of is that currently iCloud Photo Sharing limits you to sharing no more than 5,000 photos/videos.


Get Spotlight to search in Caskroom subdirs (which is now in /usr/local/)

I found the answer provided by user vitorgalvao on the project's Github page: https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask/issues/22317

  Spotlight doesn’t index /usr/local/, that why we started using /opt in the first place. Reinstall your apps with --force and they’ll be moved (our new behaviour). Spotlight will see them then.


First, you will need to confirm that your iPhone is set up correctly to send and receive messages. In order to send SMS messages, you must have an iPhone that is connected to your Apple ID. You can check by going to the iPhone's Settings app -> Messages. Confirm that "Send as SMS" is enabled and go into Text Message Forwarding. Make sure that your iPad is there.

Next make sure that your phone number is listed under "Send & Receive at".

On your iPad, open Settings -> Messages and make sure that the phone number is listed under "Send & Receive At".


Dock doesn't start after restarting from Bootcamp

Have you tried trashing the Dock plist? Maybe a corrupted file.

sudo rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist

Run that in terminal it will remove the file and a new one will generate on next log in. Only downside to trying is it will reset your dock so you will have to put yours apps back to it any other setting you may have changed on it.


get photos from old iphone to new iphone through icloud data backup

Check Use iCloud backup part.
Check this out :  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201269


Migration Assistant (going from 2011 MBP running Mavericks to 2013 rMBP running Mavericks) broke Apple Mail

Turns out I'm not the only person this has happened to.  From this Apple Support Community Post, if you quit Mail, uncheck the checkboxes from the Internet Accounts prefpanes for anything Mail related, and then delete the files in the Container folder as mentioned in the posting, everything seems to work.


Trying to copy files and preserve ownership

Are you copying to a mounted volume that is on another system? If so, it may be confusing the uid and gid's.

Or are you copying to a NAS which might have an override setting for the ownership of the connected user. For example FreeNAS has options for NFS mounts to Mapall User and Mapall Group, and for AFP mounts to set default file and directory permissions

you can check for uid with something like
    dscl . -read /Users/ UniqueID
and check for group id with
    cat /etc/groups
or
    dscacheutil -q group

Could you try tar'ing up a few files, copying them to the new volume and then untar'ing them and then check the file permissions?


iPad 2 Wifi + 3G With iOS 4.3.3 has no multitasking gestures?

Most likely you used that iPad for development, when you connect it to XCode, and set it "Use for development" the Enable gestures switch will appear.


Why does quitting an application open the minimised window of a running application?

OSX is setup to have a window take focus, this usually requires a Window to show, this is being in the foreground. The application that this window belongs to  is the process that receives and interprets keystrokes (strictly key events) (after the system global ones are dealt with)

Thus when you quit an application the OS has to choose an Application to put in the foreground.

I can't find the overall description in one document so this is based on development experience. If someone could find the correct overview this would help.


Apple provides a Thread Affinity API, but nothing like taskset.

  OS X does not export interfaces that identify processors or control thread placement—explicit thread to processor binding is not supported. Instead, the kernel manages all thread placement.  Applications expect that the scheduler will, under most circumstances, run its threads using a good processor placement with respect to cache affinity.


Terminal could not find command "$ php -v"

The $ is just an example for the shell prompt in whatever instruction guide you are reading (used to indicate that you should run the command from your standard user account. A # would indicate that you should run the command as an admin/root user). Just run

php -v

instead.


Bash Terminal keeps showing "No such file or directory" at startup

Check the contents of your ~/.bash_profile, or ~/.bashrc, for anything regarding this.

You can try renaming all three files to something else, then relaunch Terminal. If the problem goes away, put each file back one by one and test each time to find which file contains the 'bad' line.


Yes. It usually "just works," but if you're having trouble, Apple has detailed instructions:

Apple Portables: How to use your computer in closed clamshell (display closed) mode with an external display


Applescript to disable screen saver through sending keystroke

Check out the dictionary for the System Events app that's included with Applescript. You can access it from the AppleScript Editor:

  File > Open Dictionary... > System Events.app

There's a class called "screen saver preferences object" in there that should do what you need without having to script the GUI.

EDIT: Try setting the property "delay interval" of the object to 0 to disable the screensaver.


How to cmd-tab to a group of windows, from different programs?

You can achieve this by using multiple desktops on your Mac.

Start off by going into mission control (either swipe up with 4 fingers on your trackpad or press the f3 key) and then move your cursor to the top left of the screen and press the plus button. Drag the windows you want over to the new desktop then click on the new desktop and arrange the windows. You can quickly switch between desktops with cmd and he left or right arrow.


I searched Alternativeto.net and came up with these search results:
Jumpcut

Jumpcut is an application that provides "clipboard buffering" — that is, access to text that you've cut or copied, even if you've subsequently cut or copied something else. The goal of Jumpcut's interface is to provide quick, natural, intuitive access to your clipboard's history.

It sits in your menu bar:

And you can assign a hotkey to bring up a pasting window:

According to the Flycut website, Flycut is based on Jumpcut. I am currently using it and love it!
PTHPasteboard
Pretty close to Jumpcut, with the exception that there is a paid upgrade.


"readlink" gets the original path of a symlink; what's the equivalent for Mac aliases?

After more googling, I was able to pull together the pieces for an osascript command:

alias_path="your/alias/path"
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder"' -e "posix path of (original item of alias file (posix file \"$alias_path\") as text)" -e 'end tell'


not really an answer, but maybe a hint as to where to go next...

To catch it earlier, you'd have to intercept it at the download folder. I'd guess the folder name will be different for everybody - mine is at
/private/var/folders/nc/c83zpk8x7kd9qrxrd3nnbfym0000gn/C/com.apple.appstore

You can find it from the App Store app > Debug > Show Download Folder... if you enable the debug menu with
defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true


Can not restore my iPhone 5 because of restriction passcode

You can refer to this Github project to recover restrictions passcode from an unencrypted backup.
https://github.com/gwatts/pinfinder/blob/master/README.md


What does "Sound Check" in iPod settings do?

It enables what basically is just normalization. It scans the library for track volume information, and updates the normalization metadata if necessary. It also honors it, of course.


(iOS 11) What does "ESN Locked," mean? (Sprint)

In short, your phone is now near to impossible to repair. You cannot use it as a cellular phone anymore. It is deactivated, and the one thing you can do is sell it for parts.

Sprint could have locked your ESN (Electronic Serial Number) because you did not pay your bill. Or if the phone was reported lost or stolen.


MacBook takes screenshots without user input

According to Trend MICRO (September 12, 2016) the symptoms you describe do confirm that this could be a virus or intruder:

Infection Channel: Downloaded from the Internet, Dropped by other malware

This backdoor enables the attacker to steal a range of information, including screenshots, audio, and keylogs. It can also execute commands and communicate using encrypted data.


Improving Cmd-` app window switching - MRU order and/or preview

You can use an app called witch.

http://manytricks.com/witch/

It allows cmd+` switching using MRU order and a popup overlay similar to the default cmd+tab overlay. You can also, optionally, show window previews and many other customizations.


How to delete all NSLog's & comments from my Xcode application?

as a Dev, I can offer these two methods, although I agree with Daniel, that Stack Overflow is a better place to ask this.

Anyway, the first is a simple replace.

Shift-Option-f. Then type NSLog. That will find all the occurances of NSLog in your app.

Then switch find to replace. Then replace "NSLog" with "//NSLog". That will comment out all of them.

A second - better option takes a bit more work.

First, do the above but instead of replacing the string with "//NSLog", replace it with something like "DLog".

Then, in the prefix.pch file.. Write something like this:

#ifdef DEBUG
#    define DLog(...) NSLog(__VA_ARGS__)
#else
#    define DLog(...)
#endif
#define ALog(...) NSLog(__VA_ARGS__)

This way, while your app is in debug mode, all the logs will appear, but when you move your app to release mode, the logs are hidden.

Hope this helps.


Is it possible to send project from iMovie 10.1 to Final Cut Pro 7.0?

Well according to Apple you need to upgrade to Final Cut Pro X. Just US$ 300 bucks. More info here: https://help.apple.com/imovie/mac/10.1/#/movcbf7e2a3f

A cheaper alternative would be exporting a XML and use FCP 7 to import the file and then reconnect the media you used on iMovie.

Last case scenario: do most of the work over iMovie and export a big quicktime clip to open in FCP 7 and finish your project.


How do I turn off/disable my trackpad on a MacBook Air?

To turn off the track pad you’ll need to attach a mouse or wireless trackpad but you don’t need to use it.

To turn off the trackpad when a mouse is connected:

From the  Apple menu go to System Preferences
Click Accessibility
Select Mouse and Trackpad on the left
Select “Ignore built-in trackpad when mouse or wireless trackpad is present”


how to get pictures off the phone (running 5.1.1)?

Two options come to mind:

set up email on the iPhone and mail the photos to yourself (might be kind of cumbersome with iOS 5 though)
install any third party app allowing photo upload (e.g. Dropbox or Flickr) on the iPhone and upload all photos to it


I am the administrator from UDIDRegistrations.com. I want to state that we do not support piracy in any way shape or form. Any members that promote piracy are immediately banned.

We simply allow you to join our development team so you can sign your own developed applications and test them on your own iDevice. By extension of doing this, your iDevice is registered which will allow you to install betas granted you have downloaded the files yourself.

You can use Certificate & Provisioning to develop with Xcode and test on your registered device. Obviously, it cannot be submitted to the App Store unless you have your own developer account. But paying a fraction of the fee to start developing is well worth it!

Additionally you can use InstaSign and Zeusmos to sign these applications on the go.


Audio tracks can be removed from QuickTime movies using Automator.

This workflow

will remove the audio track from all the files in the Movies folder on the desktop.

Note this will remove the audio tracks in situ so please take a copy of them if you want to keep the audio.


Is there a full-featured Mac email app that natively implements labels (instead of folders) and archiving?

I have two backup recommendations. Although these are not apps you'd use to manage your mail, they do backup your account to your system so you can use whatever management client you like (e.g. Sparrow, Mail, etc.).

I use getmail by Charles Cazabon to back up my entire Gmail account silently in the background. The emails are backed up into a large .mbox file, accessible by any number of mail clients. This also makes it easy to move your entire account from one machine to another, or to restore. The program says it works with any IMAP account - support folders, labels, etc. I only use it with Gmail.

A second backup option is Gmvault. There's a Windows GUI installer but for OS X one still needs to go to the command-line. Again it backs up your Gmail account (the sync option) and stores the emails locally on the file system. Emails are stored individually as .eml with an accompanying metadata file. You can manipulate those files as you like without messing up the gmvault functionality. There's also a restore option, and it's suppose to handle IMAP discrepancies with Gmail well, although I've never encountered any problems there that (of which I'm aware).


PWA application using angular 4 is not rendering properly on Safari

It was a polyfill issue. please read following,
https://github.com/angular/angular/issues/10420


I had a similar problem.

In my case when I pulled down the airport icon it saw the connection, but would then not connect. Along the way to not connecting it would ask me to enter my password. Even after entering the proper password it would not connect.

I finally solved the problem by going in to /Application/Utilities/Keychain Access.app and deleting my home wifi's stored password.

The next time I connected - it asked for the password and from that point on it has connected just fine.


iPod Touch 5th generation; iMessages and Facetime doesn't work

I will try restoring the iPod itself. It sounds like a software issue, maybe about cache.

There's also another possibilities about your network routers. It might be blocking those ports or whatever. Try with an Apple one.


Change mail back to embedding attachments

defaults delete com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing


How do I troubleshoot a lockup that occurs when plugging in an external monitor?

Since the mouse pointer gets frozen, you can be pretty confident that the lockup is happening deep down in the system - kernel extensions, hardware interrupt type things.

Assuming you have a great backup and don't mind futzing a bit (and I'll also assume you haven't extra cables, monitors, macs to just eliminate one thing at a time) you can surely try booting again in Safe Mode.

To boot in Safe Mode, hold the shift key down - it will bypass all non essential kernel extensions and may or may not help you isolate the issue.

It's best to be systematic when troubleshooting - so I'd try that one guess, then be more logical about it.

Why not start with the "bible" on Isolating issues in Mac OS X?

Don't forget you get 90 days of support from Apple - you can hit them up on AppleCare (800-APL-CARE or online - express lane) - they have a standing exception for people that cover software purchases for support - even if your hardware is out of the free software support timeframe.

The wisdom to isolate software before hardware is probably the best call here - even though it's a monitor and clearly buggy. What are the odds that Lion and the hardware failed at the same time? It's possible and you might be able to take your Air to another monitor with your adapter / cable and rule that out.

Good luck, and happy hunting - partner!


As it stands it shows the data with a (±) 50 Mb resolution.

You can see it as fine grained as per application data usage.

If you scroll down further (in Cellular Data usage), you will get an alphabetical list of all the apps have use cellular data.

If you scroll all the way down at the bottom, you will see a button called System Services. If you tap on that, it will show you how much cellular data you are using for things like Messaging Services, Push Notifications, Documents & Sync, iTunes Accounts, Siri, Voicemail, Software Updates, Find My iPhone, Diagnostics and Apple ID Services.


Reuse App ID with freshly created Developer Team

Release your app in the App Store with the old account.
The minute it is released (you can specify the date), you change the status to 'Developer Rejected'
Transfer your app to the new account.

From Apple Developer documentation:

  Before you transfer an app to another developer, ensure you’ve met the
  following criteria:

  Make sure your accounts aren’t in a pending or changing state.
  Make sure the app uses only technology and content that can be transferred.
  No version of the app can use an iCloud entitlement.
  No version of the app can use a Passbook entitlement.
  The app can’t offer (or have previously offered) in-app purchase subscriptions: auto-renewable, free, or non-renewing.
  The App must have had at least one version that has been released to the App Store.

  Make sure the app and any in-app purchase products it offers have a
  status that supports transfers. The app status can be one of the following:

  Ready for Sale
  Prepare for Submission
  Developer Removed From Sale
  Invalid Binary
  Developer Rejected
  Rejected


Setting keyboard shortcut to switch to an application

I would highly recommend installing QuickSilver which is an excellent application launcher:

http://qsapp.com/

In QuickSilver you can also setup keyboard shortcuts for various actions (called Triggers)  including launching an application.

If you click here

http://qsapp.com/about.php

and then browse through the feature description until the eighth pane, you will learn about QuickSilver Triggers.

You could also have a quick look at the manual which is found here:

http://mysite.verizon.net/hmelman/Quicksilver.pdf

Triggers are described starting on page 34.

Hope this helps.


Copy & Paste from iPhone to Mac doesn't work (Universal Clipboard)

If the copy feature was working in the past and all of a sudden it stopped working, then you could try either of the following options:

Restart Bluetooth (Turn off & on) on both the devices (iPhone & Mac) - System Preferences --> Bluetooth --> Turn Bluetooth Off
Sign Out and Sign In back to iCloud on both the devices (iPhone & Mac)

If neither works, you can restart both the devices and it should start working.


Is there a barcode app that works on pictures instead of needing to be connected to wifi for it to work?

I use RedLaser and it has this capability. If RedLaser can't connect to the internet when you take the picture of the barcode, it will store the number and let you look it up later:


Is it possible to change an adult account to a child one?

I had the same issue, I added my kids to Family Sharing but they showed up as adults (and so could make purchases without my permission). Fortunately you can easily change it.

If you go to https://appleid.apple.com and login using their account details, in the Password and Security section, you can change the year of their birth. 1/1/2001 works fine, I think the key is that they need to be over 13 to change from Adult to Child account. I left my kids' birthdays with the correct day and month but used 2001.

Going back to the iCloud section on my phone, it shows my kids as "Age 13".


The easiest way is to use each of the gitmoji emoji a bunch of times and then they will be in your frequently used list in the Emoji & Symbols picker.

The categories/groups are defined by Unicode as ranges of the character set. I am not aware that it is possible to define your own. There are no clues in CharacterPicker.framework.

You could also setup keyboard text replacements so you can type :apple: and it will be automatically replaced with . I use Alfred to do this, but you could use System Preferences > Keyboard > Text to do it.

You could also try Dash, a document viewer/browser, that can be configured to show a Gitmoji cheat sheet. I have assigned a custom keyboard shortcut for Dash to appear.


Are there any apps that convert files for iPhone 3G?

iTunes can convert movies into an iPhone friendly format. If you have more specific needs, Handbrake is the video converter of choise on OSX.

For other files, applications like GoodReader or Air Sharing (link to iPhone version, there is also an universal version available) allow reading most "standard" document formats and also offer ways to upload files to your phone without using iTunes.


I want this to be OS based, so I don't need an internet connection or a browser open etc. Just something that can happen in the background

The easiest way to do it would be with an application, but here's how to do it with built-in OS commands only. I know you want it to be event driven, but I'm not sure how to accomplish that, so here's one way of checking the battery level, then doing something else if it's above/below a threshold.

You may consider a launchd process, this is basically a scheduled task which runs every x minutes. They are often used by advanced users, but aren't too difficult to set up. You configure a launchd scheduled task with a .plist file which you put into this directory: Macintosh HD\Library\LaunchDaemons and this is how you structure the .plist file;

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Debug</key>
<true/>
<key>ExitTimeOut</key>
<integer>120</integer>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.me.BatteryInfo</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/Users/yourusername/batt.sh</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>1800</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

If you were to save that file as com.me.BatteryInfo in the LaunchDaemons folder mentioned above, it would create a scheduled task which runs every 30 minutes. The number, 1800, directly above </dict> is the time in seconds of how often you want the task to run. Where it says <string>/Users/yourusername/batt.sh</string> is where you specify which script runs on schedule. You must leave <string> and </sting> intact.

The line <string>com.me.BatteryInfo</string> is the unique name of the scheduled task. If you are going to make more than one, make sure each .plist has a unique name here.

The next thing you need to do is change the ownership of the .plist to root. This is required as a security feature (to stop software/users creating scheduled malicious tasks, I assume). To change the ownership of the file, do sudo chown root \Library\LaunchDaemons\yourtask.plist (replace yourtask.plist with the actual file name of the .plist you created). This task will prompt you for a password.

Now you need to create the script which will run periodically. You need to make a .sh file (a bash script) to tell the computer what to do. To make a .sh file, open up a programmers text editor, such as Sublime Text or Komodo Edit. DO NOT use Text Edit, as it often adds text to your files which would interfere with your script. Text Edit shouldn't really be used for code.

Make a script (.sh file) with the following code;

#!/bin/sh

percent=$(ioreg -l | awk '$3~/Capacity/{c[$3]=$5}END{OFMT="%.3f";max=c["\"MaxCapacity\""];print(max>0?100*c["\"CurrentCapacity\""]/max:"?")}')

if [ $percent > 95 ]
    then
        echo 'charged.'
fi
exit 0

Replace echo 'charged.' with the terminal command(s) you would like to run when the battery is charged. open /Applications/Notes.app will open the Notes application; you can change the directory to open a different application.

$percent > 95 This tells the next line to only run when the battery is more than 95 charged. You can change this to whatever you want. The battery level here will often be slightly different to what is displayed in the menu bar at the top. If you want to 'run when battery is fully charged' I recommend leaving this as > 95.
If you want the task to run when your battery goes below 20% for example, change it to $percent < 20

NOTE: Because this is a scheduled task, your script will run every x number of minutes. This means if you put open \Applications\Notes.app inside your script, the Notes application will start every x minutes (if your battery is charged)

This task will run even if nobody is logged in.

I know you asked this question a while ago, but hopefully this will help someone.


Merge two folders, without overwriting any files

Not sure why the other answer was deleted, it was almost right.

I use the terminal command to do this:

cp -n -v '/src'/* '/dest'

cp = Copy

-n = Don't overwrite existing

-v = Verbose output


How to share a (non-iCloud) library in the new Yosemite Photos App?

Hold the alt (option) key while starting Photos App. You will be prompted to choose a Library.


Suddenly I'm requested to restore my iPhone to factory settings

Firstly I would sign up to iCloud if you haven't and then use the over the air backup to backup your iPhone (You get 5GB free!) then once this is done, you will be able to reset the phone should you want / need to.

Have there been any updates to your Virtual Box since your last sync? If not, it could be that iTunes can not see its XML file needed for device synchronisation; also ensure that all of the helper services are started on your machine.

Failing the above and assuming you follow the first recommendation, try resetting and restoring from iCloud.

Best of luck


How to use same TestFlight invitation from different devices?

As Janos said,
In order to get an invitation code again, the hack is to remove that email account from being a tester and re-add him again.
Apple will send him an email with a new redeem code.

Otherwise, Apple will send an email without a redeem code.


weird ZSH issue (resolving environment variable)

As explained in https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56951712/why-is-zsh-not-able-to-read-tilde-from-a-path-in-a-script zsh doesn't expand ~ within double quotes. So you can do one of
export ZSH=~"/.oh-my-zsh"
export ZSH="$HOME/.oh-my-zsh"

(where the second option also works if there are space characters in your home path), or set
set -o magicequalsubst

to have zsh expand ~ in such cases.


What's a good iTunes alternative to use with my iPod nano 6g?

Mediamonkey is a good alternative on Windows, the nano 6th gen is present in the list of compatible devices.


AppleScript to save active Microsoft Word document IFF there is one

You need to query Word for the count of document objects – active document is just a convenience shortcut to the frontmost one in that list. Unluckily, Word’s somewhat peculiar AppleScript implementation does not return an empty list object when there is no open document, but missing value (AppleScript’s take on nil) instead. Taking that into account, the following function queries Word for open documents:

on hasDocument()
  tell application "Microsoft Word"
    every document is not missing value
  end tell
end

– put that in front of your script and change your conditional to if it is running and my hasDocument() and you should be fine.


How to disable autocorrect for only one application in OSX?

Turn off Autocorrect per Application

You can  do this in "Edit" menu for that Application under "Spelling and Grammar" and disable "Check Spelling While Typing".


Settings to use in Garageband for creating sounds for an iPhone application?

If you use the internal mic of your mac or your iPhone you can not expect a good quality. You must use a real microphone like the one from Apogee.


Possible a duplicate, but of course BetterTouchTool


Adobe Creative Suite CS5 - One License Multiple Macs

Adobe's answer will be:

  Q: Can I distribute a Creative Suite 5.5 edition across multiple
  users or computers?

  A:The software license agreement accompanying your product may
  entitle you to install and activate the software on two systems with
  certain restrictions.  The product license agreement for suite
  editions does not allow you to install the individual components of a
  single suite edition across multiple computers. Read the software
  license agreement for more information. Subscription editions follow
  the same license agreement terms.

With that in mind you will need two licenses for the products you use, you may not need the entire creative suite on each computer and find it cheaper to purchase licenses for individual apps.

If you buy apps from the Apple App Store you can install those apps on any computer that you use the same Apple ID with. Adobe has yet to move their apps to the App Store, but I suspect they will at some point.


Individual terminal tabs running emacs become buggy/corrupted over time

One way to keep emacs running stable for a long time is running it as a separate GUI app. I installed GNU Emacs for Mac OSX and it runs without any redraw issue. It will pick up your normal .emacs configuration and if you do not like the GUI elements like the toolbar you can hide them on startup in the variable default-frame-alist.


I've had the same issue for Mojave and now Catalina. I've posted several 'suggestions' to Apple for improvements, especially the clunky UI, but nothing's come through yet!
The only way I know to speed things up is to move to a new, identical rule once the number of conditions grows to over 100, otherwise the interface just gums up.


How to upgrade Mid-2009 MacBook from Mountain Lion to El Capitan?

As per the support documentation you should be able to download El Capitan from the App Store.

If you've previously downloaded El Capitan with your Apple ID (e.g. onto another device), you should find it on the "Purchased" tab.


Apple Music charges card or available balance?

In my personal experience, store credit will be used until it is gone, and then the credit card on file will be charged.


Keyboard button backtick/tilde become section symbol after replacement

for me it was a matter of configuring the keyboard through Settings -> Keyboard and then "recognising" again "unrecognised keyboard" (i.e., my plain keyboard which was plugged in all the time) and then setting its type to US (ANSI) instead of European (ISO).


How comes Spotlight started to show results half in English?

It's a glitch, just reboot

After a day or so I simply decided to use the Windows method. I rebooted and the problem is gone.


How do I prevent automatic mounting of all the partitions on a flash drive?

Borrow a trick from Apple - set the partition type to something besides Apple_HFS. The Apple_Boot partition type is used by Lion Recovery, and should provide the exact behavior you want. This process is NOT for the faint-of-heart, and you should definitely have a backup. If any of this process is unclear, DO NOT DO IT. Note that all numbers and drive names will be different on your computer.

First, determine which "BSD disk" your target drive is.  Very likely disk1, but not necessarily. For example, this is my current system:

bash-3.2$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh SSD           119.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *320.1 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Secondary HD            319.7 GB   disk1s2

What follows is a copy-paste-edit job from Dmitry Dulepov:

We need to change the type of this partition. This involves noting partition parameters, deleting and creating a patition with gpt. Firsts, let find out parameters:

bash-3.2$ sudo gpt show disk1
         start       size  index  contents
            0          1         PMBR
            1          1         Pri GPT header
            2         32         Pri GPT table
           34          6
           40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
       409640  246725744      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
    247135384     262144
   247397528    1269528       3  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
    248667056    1402591
    250069647         32         Sec GPT table
    250069679          1         Sec GPT header

Next, delete and add the partition. Note that we use values found on the previous step.

bash-3.2$ sudo gpt remove -b 247397528 -s 1269536 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk1
disk0s3 removed
bash-3.2$ sudo gpt add -b 247397528 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
disk0 disk1s3 added

Notice the different GUID. That is important because it tells OS X the type of the partition.

…

Check if everything is ok:

bash-3.2$ diskutil list disk1

You should see what had previously been an Apple_HFS partition should be listed as Apple_Boot.  Such partitions are bootable on an Intel Mac without being auto-mounted by a running system. Repeat this general process with each partition that you want to "hide" normally.


Windows File Sharing user checkbox uncheckable

This might help ... basically you need to create a "share-only" user on the Mac.

http://chriswrites.com/how-to-share-files-folders-between-the-mac-and-pc/


On your iPhone, go into Settings -> Store, sign out of your old Apple ID and sign in with your new one.


Almost all audio-related functions are failing (iPhone 7)

If you've tried restarting, updating, and factory resetting and have had no luck fixing the issues, you may need to send your phone in to Apple for repair. Getting stuck on the Apple screen for hours, even after reset, leads me to believe it's a logic board issue. Personal repair may be expensive, difficult, and will cause damage to the waterproof seal.


My iPad is not turning on though charged for one hour and hard reboot

If you followed those instructions for resetting, restoring or recharging the battery in your iPad then you are left with the last line.

  Eventually, you'll need to have the iPad serviced if it cannot wake from sleep due to a very low battery charge condition even when plugged into power.

We have a number of independent phone/tablet repair shops nearby. You may as well. Ask around for a reputable one and have them look at it. Yes you could take it to an Apple store, but if the independent store is good at their job it will likely be faster and cheaper there. But totally your call.


HFS+ Partition of Mac OSX is not recognized in Windows 10 Bootcamp

Your computer uses two partition tables stored on your internal drive. The first is the Master Boot Record (MBR) partition table and the second is the GUID Partition Table (GPT). You used the commands fdisk and gpt to print out most of the contents of the MBR partition table and GPT, respectively.

For the most part, Windows (booted via BIOS) ignores the GPT and uses the MBR table exclusively to determine the partitions on your internal drive. For Macs, the usual requirement is for the first partition in the MBR table to have an id=EE. Also this partition should start at a Logical Block Address (LBA) of 1 and end at the same LBA as the EFI partition in the GPT. (The EFI partition has an GUID=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B.)

Your MBR partition table contains the following problems:

Your first partition (id=EE) extends past the EFI partition in the
GPT. In fact, this partition covers the first three partitions in the
GPT.
The last partition (number 4) is empty. This probably where the HFS+
partition information was stored before you updated to Windows 10.
The partitions are not in ascending order. I do not know if this one
has to be fixed. For now, I will ignore this problem.

One of the easiest commands that can fix these types of problems is gdisk. This command can be found in most Linux installs. Below is a example of how to use the command to fix your Mac. In the example, this command was run under OS X. I assume you will be using Linux, therefore you should substitute /dev/sda for /dev/disk0.

Steelhead:~ davidanderson$ gdisk /dev/disk0
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.1

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
  MBR: hybrid
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): r

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): h

WARNING! Hybrid MBRs are flaky and dangerous! If you decide not to use one,
just hit the Enter key at the below prompt and your MBR partition table will
be untouched.

Type from one to three GPT partition numbers, separated by spaces, to be
added to the hybrid MBR, in sequence: 5 4 2
Place EFI GPT (0xEE) partition first in MBR (good for GRUB)? (Y/N): y

Creating entry for GPT partition #5 (MBR partition #2)
Enter an MBR hex code (default 07): 07
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): y

Creating entry for GPT partition #4 (MBR partition #3)
Enter an MBR hex code (default 83): 83
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): n

Creating entry for GPT partition #2 (MBR partition #4)
Enter an MBR hex code (default AF): af
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): n

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): w

Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!

Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/disk0.
Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Warning: The kernel may continue to use old or deleted partitions.
You should reboot or remove the drive.
The operation has completed successfully.
Steelhead:~ davidanderson$

When finished the output from sudo fdisk /dev/disk0 should show the following values in the #, id, start and size columns.

 #: id      start         size
------------------------------
 1: EE          1       409639
*2: 07  744597504    214845440
 3: 83  451624920    292970696
 4: AF     409640    449945744

If your values are different, update your question and report the differences.


Macbook pro ejects every CD/DVD just after a few seconds

Try the following steps and I am sure it will be fixed.

Clean the SuperDrive’s slot with compressed gas/vacuum cleaner.
Reset the NVRAM/PRAM and SMC

Reset NVRAM and PRAM:
Shut down the computer. Holding down the Command (Apple), Option, P, and R and then hold the Power button simultaneously, 3 times and wait for 3 loud chimes.

Delete the Finder’s preference files

Some people have reported successfully fixing Optical CD/DVD Drive on Mac or SuperDrive issues by deleting the Finder’s preference files (don’t worry, the Finder will automatically make new ones). You’ll want to delete two files: “com.apple.finder.plist” and “com.apple.sidebarlists.plist”. Both of these files are located in Users > [Your User] > Library > Preferences.
Run Disk Utility and Repair Disk Permissions
Delete the following configuration file to create a fresh copy

~/Library/Caches (your local Library directory).
System/Library/extensions.kextcache.
/System/Library/Extensions.mkext.
/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernelcaches (a directory).
/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.romextensions (a directory).
CD Info.cidb

Credits - http://coreyjmahler.com/2013/06/15/how-to-fix-a-macbook-pro-superdrive-which-continually-ejects-discs/


Probably stty sane though there are also various reset strings that vary by terminal and the TERM type (rs1 and ilk, see terminfo(5)) that may or may not be in use, and it's hard to debug something that is usually intercepted by the terminal itself to figure out what the exact bytes are. For example Terminal.app with TERM=xterm shows different reset escape sequences than TERM=xterm-256color does:

% infocmp | grep rs'[123]'
    rmul=\E[24m, rs1=\Ec, rs2=\E[!p\E[?3;4l\E[4l\E>, sc=\E7,
% echo $TERM
xterm
% TERM=xterm-256color infocmp | grep rs'[123]'
    rmso=\E[27m, rmul=\E[24m, rs1=\Ec\E]104\007,
    rs2=\E[!p\E[?3;4l\E[4l\E>, sc=\E7,

For automatic cleanup a shell function that wraps ssh with may suffice; the following one takes efforts to try to preserve the shell exit code (which is not the same as the 16-bit exit status word actually returned by a program) and resets various things. Whether this suffices for you depends on exactly what the remote end is doing and exactly how you want to clean that up.

function ssh() {
   local ret
   command ssh "$@"
   ret=$?
   stty sane
   # (optional) reset string, see terminfo(5)
   tput rs1
   # (optional) clear junk linux likes to spam terminal title bar with
   printf "\033]2;\007"
   return $ret
}

More methods to reset the terminal.


Is there a GUI difftool that does symlinks?

Both Filemerge and opendiff work with symlinks, so

opendiff symlink-to-foo symlink-to-bar

will open Filemerge and compare foo vs bar .


Unfortunately, what you are trying to accompanist is not possible due to nature of how iOS works.

The list of dictionaries available under Settings app → General → Dictionary is curated by Apple, and can not be altered/added-to by end users.

If you download a dictionary app from the App Store, it does not, and cannot be automatically integrated into the iOS operating system and made available system wide.

To use the Webster dictionary, in your case, you'll have to manually type/copy the word into the app and determine the meaning.


Share iTunes library using a blank disk image?

Why go so far as a disk image? Make a folder both users can access (maybe /Music) and put the iTunes library there.

Using one iTunes library with multiple accounts depends on how you use them. The best way is to have a primary account that is signed in and all purchases happen with that account, then authorize the machine for any other accounts that want to play music/sync apps.


Macbook Pro Retina with more than 2 external displays

You can absolutely use display link drivers. I have an Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536 MB graphics card in my 8gb Mac Book Pro (early 2015) 13 in. It drives 2 24 in Dell displays via with mindvi (normal fps) and four other Dell 24 in monitors using usb 2.0 -->minidvi adapters at 12-15fps. Not great for video or gaming, but just fine for email/documents/command line/etc. I still get full FPS on the two other monitors, so I'm not without media...  3.0 I imagine would be better, but more taxing on the system.

Anyway, my opinion is that this will work even though Display link is a little buggy and support is not great. I love the mini display devices. Like I said, I imagine 3.0 would offer a lot better FPS... but I appreciate the price point and that the system is not heavily burdened by the 2.0 devices.

As you can see on the left I have (besides terrible cable management skills) a 7 port usb 3.0 hub off of which these four displays split. I have two small 4 inch fans pointed up at the display link adapters, and my computer is kept elevated on a small stand. The laptop is is new, and my room is air conditioned with a dehumidifier and a HEPA filter to keep dust from deteriorating the impact of internal fanning systems... but my machine does not run hot at all:

My 2013 mac book air can drive 5 displays... for some reason I am hitting a limit of 4 display port devices. You may have better luck though...

[


Where are CUPS backend scripts and filters stored on Mac OS X?

/usr/libexec/cups/backend
/usr/libexec/cups/filter
... etc

Source: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/man8/cups-deviced.8.html (mirror)


Parental Controls Always Allow does not work for Avid Media Composer

I found this problem too!
Turn off parental control and it works fine.
Interesting as I have two Mac Pros and one with PCs on does allow MC to work.
The other with the PCs on and it does not.
I suppose best answer is to turn off Parental Controls for an separate account just for users whom use AVID.


What is bound at port 53 of localhost and how to stop that service?

The command
lsof -i TCP:53
will give the active sessions on port 53.

The command
netstat -vanp tcp | grep 53
will give information on the processes that are listening on port 53. The 9th column gives you the process ID (PID).

To get from the PID to the program name you run:
ps -p <PID>. Which will give you what application is running under this ID.

You can string these command together as

netstat -vanp tcp | grep 53| awk '{print $9}' | xargs ps -p

As for killing the process, you can always run kill -9 <PID>. But I'd recommend finding out what program is running and why. It might be back up after a reboot.

A similar question was asked at
Kill TCP connections on a Mac in Terminal .


Mouse cursor disappeared on external display when rotated

I actually just solved that problem on my Macbook Pro.

Tried all possible solutions. What worked was to make the cursor bigger.
However, depending on your screen resolution you will need to play with different sizes.

There is a discussion in Apple forums with more details: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8342495


Recovery mode asks for a password OS X 10.8.2

From the image, it looks like a Firmware password.

This bash script may be able to decrypt your firmware password, however it only works on a limited set of computers.

python -c "print ''.join(chr(int(c, 16) ^ 170) for c in '`sudo nvram security-password`'.split('%')[1:])"

Source


Why can’t I redownload Minecraft when I deleted it

Some reasons why this could be.

You changed your country or region:

  If you previously changed the country or region of your Apple ID, you might not see all of your past purchases.

Also try:

  If you can't find an item that you want to redownload, check your purchase history to make sure that you purchased it with the Apple ID that you're signed in with. If not, sign in with a different Apple ID.

Your purchases could be hidden:

  If you don't see items in your
  purchase history on other Apple IDs,
  check to see if the purchases are
  hidden. If your purchases are hidden,
  you might not see them even after you
  follow the steps in this article.

Additionally if the purchase was part
of a Family Sharing group and you
have been removed from it you can’t
re-download it.


How to enable mouse control (accessibility?) for Java WebStart application?

We set the Web Browser that was launching the Java WebStart application to be an Accessiblity Application and then it worked correctly!


How can I detect and remount my time machine sparsebundle?

Nowadays you can point Time Machine directly at a network share and it should handle this for you automatically. Maybe your question relates to an older version of macOS.


App Store download paused due to internet disconnection

It'll automatically resume the progress of the download.


Permanent way to keep youtube playing in iOS5

You could use a different app for playing Youtube videos, which don't stop playing when you press the home button. YStream/Ystream2 is an example of such an application (amongst others).

As far as I know there is no way to prevent the built in Youtube app from stopping playback when the app is "minimized". These are the ways I know of for resuming playback:

Double tap the Home button, slide the bottom row, and press play. (As you mentioned)
Lock the screen, Double tap Home button, Press Play. (I usually find this slightly faster)
Use a Bluetooth keybord with a "Play" button.
Activating VoiceOver and double tapping the screen with two fingers.
Using the Play button on your headphones.


Where does this strange output in Terminal come from?

The reason I was getting the output in my shell for every environment I created was because my ".bash_profile" had a some statements that didn't evaluate to true. The shell was looking for a path that didn't exist anymore, so I had to update the current path so the bash didn't generate an error.

Thanks everyone!


Might it be the case of removing Mail & Messages and adding it back in to the System Preferences for Spotlight?


How many people can you add to an iMessages group?

I read nothing about a limit in the different user guides for iOS devices (e.g. iPhone User Guide [PDF, 17MB]). Because of that I think there is no limit for groups.


I appreciate this is not ideal, but when a remote client connects to Airfoil Speakers on my machine, I see a line similar to the following generated in the Console, coming from /var/log/appfirewall.log

Firewall[85]: Allow Airfoil Speakers connecting from 192.168.1.72:52013 to port 5000 proto=6

So potentially you could cat or tail the appfirewall.log looking for "Airfoil Speakers" using something like

cat /var/log/appfirewall.log | grep -i "airfoil speakers connecting"

and parse out the IP from the relevant lines.

Alternatively, I notice that Airfoil supports AppleScript so maybe there's something you could do with that. Or you could drop Rogue Ameoba an email, I've always found their support to be excellent.


How to edit sender information in Pages' letter template?

You simply click the field you want to edit to select it, then type what you want.

For example, press ⌘N and choose Letters from the Choose a Template window and select Classic Letter.

Then in the upper right hand corner, click to select the name, and type in your name.

Repeat...


Completed Reminders not syncing to iOS from OS X

Quoting a solution I found in the Apple community web site:

  I was having this problem. I changed the syncing range on the phone (under Settings > Reminders) to sync All Reminders. I then logged into iCloud and opened the Reminders tab. This actually caused the reminders on the phone to match the ones in iCloud.  I then made changes on my phone while that tab was still opened and the changes started to appear in iCould (sometimes takes a few seconds - up to 20 or 30) and synched on my iPad as well. After that, all of my changes started to sync across all devices - iPhone, iPad,Mac and in iCloud, regardless of where I made the initial change.

  Hopefully this will work for you too.

Link here.


keyboard shortcut to open a minimised window?

⌘ + Tab until you find the Mail application
Before releasing ⌘, hold down the ⌥ Option button


Is it mandatory to fill security questions and answers in order to download apps?

Whenever there is a change in account status, it blocks all subsequent Apple ID authentication from completing successfully until you resolve the issue. I've seen this happen with:

Security Questions / Answers when this rolled out a few months back.
Credit Card / Billing issues.
Purchases from a device previously unused by your account.

Only after resolving the particular issue will you be allowed to continue.


Using Fluid.app is there a way to switch tabs periodically?

Developer of Fluid here. This AppleScript is supposed to do what you are asking, but it's causing a crash in the current version of Fluid (1.8.3). I'll look into it.

tell application "<Your Fluid App Name Here>"
    tell browser window 1
        repeat
            set c_ to count of tabs
            set idx_ to index of selected tab
            set idx_ to (idx_ + 1) mod (c_ + 1)
            if idx_ is 0 then set idx_ to 1
            set tab_ to (get tab idx_ of it)
            set selected tab of it to tab_
            delay 20
        end repeat
    end tell
end tell


How can I tell which device purchased specific apps?

Sync your iPhone to iTunes, Select the App you want to know from which account it has been purchased, right click, go to Get info, under the File tab you will find something like below image where you can see who purchased the app. I have removed my Apple ID but the different names is for different accounts.


Hold down control and you can resize it to take the whole screen (although it won't necessarily add another row or column of text).

Also, in the beta version, there is an advanced preference to make this the default called "terminal windows resize smoothly."


How to grant Screen Recording permission to an Automator Quick Action

I have had some similar issues. My workaround was to add the Automator created app to:
System Preferences → Security & Privacy → Accessibility
Then running the app, letting the system add the programs it may control to:
System Preferences → Security & Privacy → Automation
This might not at all be what you asked for, but I thought it seemed a bit similar.
Note however, every time I change something in the app, I have to repeat the above steps.


How to set or change the desktop background in configuration profile in Big Sur

The com.apple.desktop payload supports two keys: locked if set to true will prevent the desktop picture being changed. override-picture-path can be used to set the path to the desktop picture. More information is given in the "Desktop Payload" section of the Configuration Profile Reference.
If you don't want to create a configuration profile by hand you can use a profile editor such as iMazing's Profile Editor.
This payload requires the picture to exist on the device. To my knowledge there is no way of embedding an image within a configuration profile.


Can I connect iPhone 6 to an old Samsung TV without HDMI?

Here's the video cable you need.

Here's the audio cable you need.

Based on the presumed age of the laptop, it's a Mini DisplayPort connection, not Thunderbolt.  The former cannot carry audio, hence the second cable.


Run

sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

and uncomment

#PasswordAuthentication yes


How can I run a current browser on older MacBook?

All MacBook Pros produced mid/late 2007 and later (MacBookPro3,1...) can be upgraded to at least OS X 10.11.

So install OS X 10.9 or later on your (mid/late 2007-...) MacBook Pro (3,1-...) and enjoy the latest Google Chrome and/or Firefox browser.

The system requirements for Firefox 49 are 10.9-10.11 and for Google Chrome 54 10.9 and later


Can I change the size of my applications folder icons from the dock?

To change the size on the Applications Dock menu in Grid view click the Applications Dock Tile and then press command- to make the menu and icons smaller or command+ to make the menu and icons larger.

I have tested this under OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5, OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 and macOS Sierra 10.12.

The image below is from OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 taken on a Thunderbolt Display at 2560 x 1440 and of three separate screen shots that were cropped from the lower right corner to the size necessary to show the size of each grid menu and its size changed and layered to reduce the size of posting 3 individual images. Nothing has been retouched, just cropped and layered to contrast between a large menu in the back, the default size menu on this Display in the middle and a smaller sized menu up front. Calculator.app was used to show scale and as you can plainly see the size of the icons changes with the size of the grid menu.


Reconfigure Thunderbolt DisplayPort Monitor Ordering

System Prefs > Displays > Arrangement.

Drag one monitor over the other to the opposite side, then move the Menu bar to whichever monitor you prefer.

The actual screen is given a large red outline as well as the representation in the control panel as you drag, so you're certain which one is which.

BTW, that tenacious holding onto which display is which is a whole lot better than it used to be, where it would randomly decide 2 identical screens were the opposite way round on occasions - back in 10.6 & before.


How do I get OS X 10.8.x to keep Finder windows open after a restart?

Try unchecking System Preferences > General > Close windows when quitting an application. 10.7 restored the state of applications by default but 10.8 doesn't.

This enables restoring state in just Finder:

defaults write com.apple.Finder NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool true
killall Finder


Why are my app reviews deleted so often and quickly since iOS 10.3?

Developers can not directly remove reviews but Apple's App Store staff can.

Developers can ask for inflammatory, misleading, or concerning reviews to be removed from the App Store and Mac App Store.

When a new version of an application is released on an Apple App Store, existing reviews can be archived and removed from immediate sight. This may be the behaviour you are seeing.

Regarding time zones, Apple appear to have review teams covering all time zones. Reviews of newly submitted applications occur on weekends and most holidays. Thus it is reasonable to assume other app store services are available at all times.


apple configurator 1.7 downgrade ios from 10 to 10

Solved. After calling apple support this option is not allow in apple configurator.


Quick and easy way to batch convert multiple HEIC to png or jpg on macOS?

This answer is what solved for me. It's based off @user3439894's extremely useful comments
To convert all .HEIC images in a directory to .png
Open terminal. cd to the directory where the .HEIC files you want to convert are stored.
for f in *.HEIC
do sips -s format png "${f}" --out "${f%.*}.png"
done

If you want to convert and resize images
The following will convert and resize images so the maximum height and width is 400 pixels (but you can change 400 below to any value)
for f in *.HEIC
do sips -s format png "${f}" -Z 400 --out "${f%.*}.png"
done

Reference

sips documentation: https://ss64.com/osx/sips.html


Mac Pro + 50” 4K Ultra HD LED TV as monitor -- Best graphics card?

TL;DR: Don't get a TV, get (almost) whatever graphics card you want

Using a TV as a monitor

Let's start with this issue. There's nothing inherently wrong with using a TV as a monitor, but it's probably not a good purchasing decision.

Here are the issues I'll go over:

Physical space
Usability
Resolution and PPI
Color
Response time
Price

Let's start from the top and work our way down.

Assuming you have the physical space to fit a 50" beast, you're fine. With that said, you'll probably be tilting you head up a lot, as you'll have more vertical space then you'll probably want. You'd be better off with a wider aspect ratio or a combo of narrower monitors placed side by side to minimize strain.

You'll obviously be losing out on some nice features of a monitor if you use a TV: certain inputs, USB hubs, onboard audio, better out-of-the-box color calibration, nicer stand/buttons/bezel, support for easy brightness changes, etc. These are the sorts of things you can probably work around, but might be annoying.

Even at 4k (3840x2160), with a 50" TV, you'll be at a mere 88.12 DPI. That's not awful (72 DIP is generally considered the minimum), but it's not good (the 1440p iMac was at 108.79), and you'll probably notice. You'd probably be happier spending that same money on a smaller display with higher PPI, even at the expense of total resolution or screen space.

Color on modern TVs is generally quite good–especially if you go the OLED route–but out-of-the-box calibration may vary (although this happens with monitors as well.) However, it sounds like you don't really care, so this isn't something too important.

One place where you're very likely to suffer is with response time. TVs usually have awful response times, some above 100 MS. That's getting to the point where it may be legitimately annoying even for some work. Given that you're not gaming, you'll be fine with a higher response time, but still, make sure you know what you're getting.

Price. This can go either way. You can easily spend more either way depending what you get. But the chances are, you won't save by getting a TV.

With that said, all this will change based on exactly what TV you get. But this is a pretty fair generalization.

One final word of advice though: you said you had two 27" iMacs. Why not use those using Target Display Mode? You won't be spending any more money and you'll have two beautiful iMacs with a lot of real estate. Throwing that out is throwing out good money. You can get a few more monitors on top of that, but you don't need to replace them.

TL;DR: Use yo iMacs, and if you really need more real estate, buy a proper monitor.

Graphics Card

Graphics cards + Mac Pro = fun.

There are two kinds of graphics cards we'll be looking at here: flashed and unflashed cards.

Flashing is the process of putting a different piece of firmware on a graphics card. Why would you need to do that? Well, if you've ever looked at a Mac graphics card, they're very expensive compared to their PC counterparts. Generally, the only difference is what firmware is on there. Most PC cards can be reflashed with the Mac firmware. I'll drop this here as further reading that does a much better job explaining what I'm trying to get at.

Sound too complicated? Don't worry, you probably don't need to flash your card at all. Most modern cards (usually AMD Tahiti and newer, Nvidia is a bit weird) will work without being flashed once you get to the OS X desktop. This does mean though that certain things won't work (your screen will be black until you finish booting for example.)

If you want a Mac card that's flashed without the hassle, you can pay MacVidCards to do it for you. They charge a decent amount, but they have solid firmwares that work.

Outside of making sure it works with your Mac, just get whatever is appropriate for your workload. It doesn't sound like you need a lot of power but like pushing a lot of pixels, so a mid-tier graphics card should work.

TL;DR: Get the appropriate card, it'll probably work.

Final Words

Feel free to add comments and I'll respond to them. There's a lot of subjective content here, so what's best for you != what's best for the average person.


Clean install Mac, restore backup without command line tools

So, in totality, deselecting "System" worked. I now have a clean slate, while the rest of my apps still work.


Disable Flash in Safari for all but YouTube

You should give "Click to Flash" a try. I believe that it does pretty much everything you are asking for.

This plugin disables flash in Safari by default, but to load some flash content all you have to do is click on the "Flash" button in a video and the video will load and play as usual. You can even whitelist sites in "Click to Flash" so you won't have to click on flash videos when browsing YouTube.

I have not been installing Flash at all on any of my machines. I use Chrome for YouTube, since it has a sandboxed version of Flash.

EDIT: Almost as soon as I hit Post on my answer I noticed that "Click to Flash has been superseded by "Click to Plugin" which appears to do much more. I haven't tried this, but it looks like the only choice for Safari 5.1 and later.


The passwd command rejects the idea that you can have a 0 length password.

Instead use dscl which is more accepting of the notion that the password is nothing.

dscl . -passwd /Users/foo

You can press enter to make the new password blank and then may get an error and have to enter the old password if you are not root

Once you authenticate (or are root already) the blank password will be set for the account in question.


How to stream a M3U file on iOS devices?

GSE SMART IPTV app is recommended to playback M3U streams on iOS devices.


Go to Safari → Preferences (or hit ⌘ cmd+,).
Go to Privacy and click on the Do not preload Top Hit in the background option.


How to get rid of "You have new mail." in zsh

Whether zsh checks for new mail can be adjusted through the MAILCHECK parameter as described in zshparam(1). It specifies the interval in seconds between checks for new mail, a zero turns off the checks completely. So just put this into your zsh configuration file:

# don't check for new mail
MAILCHECK=0


iterm + tmux isn't allowing me to scroll up with the mouse

The recent release of tmux 2.1 changed some of the configuration options. This bit of code (taken from here) restores the previous functionality:

bind -n WheelUpPane if-shell -F -t = "#{mouse_any_flag}" "send-keys -M" "if -Ft= '#{pane_in_mode}' 'send-keys -M' 'select-pane -t=; copy-mode -e; send-keys -M'"
bind -n WheelDownPane select-pane -t= \; send-keys -M

Add/place these in the ~/.tmux.conf file

Apply with tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf


Mouse not working correctly on Mac login screen

I'm assuming this is a USB mouse with a cord? I have seen issues with those not recognizing properly until login when connected through the USB ports on a keyboard, or on laptops. I've always accounted it to the mouse needing more voltage than the USB port is delivering until the user is logged in. This seems to be the case with older mice more often than newer ones.


Apple Mail hides mail received on multiple addresses

Many common Apple mail issues can be fixed by rebuilding the Envelope Index.

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE CREATED A BACKUP, FIRST. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Quit mail.app
Hold down the Option key, then in the Finder choose Go > Library.
In Macintosh HD/Users/yourname/Library/Mail/V2/MailData, move all files starting with “Envelope Index,” such as Envelope Index or Envelope Index-shm to your Desktop.
Launch Mail and it will build new Envelope Index files -- this step could take a long time.


You can not re-position the menu bar, but you can configure it to be hidden when idle by checking the option 'Automatically hide and show the menu bar' under the General tab of System Preferences. Screenshot provided for further clarification.


Open another terminal from the current one

You have to separate the options and favor -n:

open -n -a terminal

This creates a 2nd Terminal instance!

If you add another option -F (fresh) you won't see any old/restored sessions:

open -n -F -a terminal


Script for getting windows from beyond display border

I went to the URL in your question, click the Raw button, copied the code and pasted it into Script Editor, where I saved it as an application named: Gather Off-Screen Windows.app

I then went into System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Accessibility, as show in the image below, and added the Gather Off-Screen Windows.app.

I moved some windows off-screen, then ran the Gather Off-Screen Windows.app, and it completed without error and moved the off-screen windows fully onto the screen.

Now while I added the Gather Off-Screen Windows.app to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Accessibility after having saved it, had I not done so, I would have expected to see the following dialog boxes when I ran the app, (which sometimes one or both may not appear):

That said, let me say that while I have not studied the script in depth to have a through understanding of it mechanics, nonetheless, I see what I consider some poor coding in this instance in the beginning and would change the following line of code from:

repeat with proc in application processes

To:

repeat with proc in (application processes whose visible is equal to true)

The reason this change makes sense to me is, as an example, at the moment I have 38 application processes running of which only 10 are visible and therefore it's seems senseless to query further the 28 application processes that aren't even visible.

Also note that I even minimized some of the off-screen windows before running the app and when I unminimized them, they were then completely on screen. So the visible property in this instance is about the process not minimized off-screen windows that while minimized are not visible.


Is it possible to upgrade a Mac Mini to OS X Lion?

Yes, you can update a Mac Mini to Mac OS Lion.

What you heard was incorrect, Mac Mini's are upgradable, just like any other Mac. Lion requires a Core 2 duo processor and 2 GB memory to run, so any Mac produced after circa 2007 will be fine.


Is SDHC Card compatible with a MBP mid-2009?

It finally seems that my MBP is incompatible with this SD card format or size.

I bought a multi-cards reader, and it works.

Note that the exact same behavior on a 2010 MBP.


As a developer, what if I don't support iOS 3.1?

You can find Marco Arment's stats on iOS version he collected from his Instapaper app (as CanuckSkier say in the comment, Instapaper is generally used by tech-savvy people, so "real"-people usage might be slightly less).

Here's a graph:

As you can see, at least 98% of users are already on iOS 4.0 and 96% on 4.2. So I guess you can safely stop supporting iOS 3.x.


It looks like you jumped ahead to some steps that aren’t needed. Apple recommends these steps:

Quit any programs you know were using the file, then try emptying the trash.
If that doesn't work, restart your computer to kill off background processes, then try emptying the trash.
If that doesn't work, restart your computer in safe mode by holding down the shift key as it boots to prevent login items and automatically launched programs from running, then try emptying the trash.
If that doesn't work, restart your computer in Recovery mode by holding down ⌘-R, and when it boots, select "Disk Utility". In Disk Utility, use the "First Aid" feature to repair the disk containing the file you wish to delete. Then reboot your computer and empty the trash.

That is the end of the advice in the linked article from Apple, but if all that fails, make a Time Machine backup, erase the drive and reload your data. If Disk Utility and Safe Mode don’t clear things, it’s usually more hassle for trained mac admin to diagnose and fix than erase and reinstall.


Can you restore a phone with an old version of iOS if that phone was never upgraded?

The official answer to this is no, you can not restore to a previous version of iOS other than the current one available from Apple. This is because iTunes is attempting to obtain tokens from the Apple signing servers to authorize the device when restoring.

The non official answer is yes, but requires some technical skills using iFaith. Post back if you require assistance down this path.


Replacing rubber spring/cup under Tab key cap

These sort of surgeries are always "twitchy" at best. Worse, the new butterfly key design makes these way harder. With the original chicklet style keys, a good technician would get 50 to 90% success rate. I would expect the inverse - high failure rates on the 2015 and newer key designs.

The tolerances in the keyboard area (mostly the scissors) are very, very thin - and at some point, extra hard superglue or some cup that's 0.2 mm to the left of where it should be will require you to get a proper replacement.

In the pre-unibody days, the keyboards were a single piece that you could easily exchange.

Now, the keyboard is screwed into the unibody frame, so it's a very deep surgery to get everything removed and then handle more than 50 exceptionally small screws to get at the back sides of the pieces where the rubber springs that yield the touch for each key are mounted.

Lastly - even if you do replace things - the keyboard action is not what it was (and most likely even close) - so if you're the type of person that would keep on typing even if the key cap was missing entirely - go for a repeat repair on the rubber nubbin with a razor blade and superglue. If not, it's time for a proper repair or using an external keyboard while you save money for a replacement.

If you were to get a precision knife to clean out the prior repair and choose a more flexible adhesive, you might have better luck.


Macs come with libxml2 which inclues a tool called xmllint. You can use this to format your xml with ease. The tool does not have a graphical interface, so you'll need to fire up terminal.

Example 1. Format a file

xmllint --format - < file_to_format.xml > formatted_output.xml

Example 2. Format xml from clipboard

pbpaste | xmllint --format - > formatted_output.xml


Why the need to update MacOS for iOS 14.5

Similar Mac & OS, just saw the same notification - being prepared for it i followed through the Learn More… link to Apple KB - If you see "Software update is required to connect to your iOS device" on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch

When you connect your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to a Mac with macOS 10.11 or later, you might need to update the software on your Mac in order for it to recognise your iOS device. Learn what to do.
If your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch has a newer version of iOS than is supported by your Mac, you may see this alert: "A software update is required to connect to your iOS device. Would you like to download and install this update now?"

Click Install to download and install the software so your Mac can update or sync your iOS device. If you continue to see this alert, make sure that your software on your Mac and iTunes are up-to-date.

From comments - softwareupdate --history | head  may help figure out what was updated.
I tried it on mine, though I'd also run the new security & Safari updates. There was one other item shown as updated with a timestamp that matches my iOS update, though to version 1.0.0.0 which doesn't seem greatly helpful.
macOS Mojave Security Update 2021-003      10.14.6    27/04/2021, 7:53:05 pm
Safari                                     14.1       27/04/2021, 7:53:05 pm
Mobile Device                              1.0.0.0    27/04/2021, 4:46:37 pm


Any kind of rootkit worth its salt is going to be nearly undetectable on a running system because they hook into the kernel and/or replace system binaries to hide itself. Basically what you're seeing cannot be trusted because the system cannot be trusted. What you need to do is turn off the system, connect an external boot drive (don't connect it to the running system) and then boot the system from an external disk and look for suspicious programs.


Tilting up magic keyboard for better ergonomics

If this is for a semi-permanent setup:

get two rubber erasers (or corks from a wine bottle, as long it those made from real cork wood), these provide enough drag resistance so it does not slide too much.
cut them to the desired height and angle. This requires some experimentation and tinkering. If the erasers are big enough this might actually be enough. Place them under the back sie of the keyboard.
use a non too permanent double-sided adhesive strip to make this reversably permanent (powerstrips for posters work quite well; if removed they won't leave a trace of manipulation)

This is the most flexible solution that adapts most easily too almost any angle you like.

Also, from a related question:

  Get a silicone non-slip cutting mat and cut it to size. It's flexible, customizable, and portable.
  (Allan's comment)

Cutting this so that it only slips under one (back-)side may work for you.

Or, like the answer there seemed to suggest: you might go for a permanent solution and attach self-adhesive rubber feet, buy them according to your desired angle.


The Service should have been saved in ~/Library/Services (~ means your home directory), so have a look for the file there. Deleting it should remove the functionality (although it should be showing up in the Services section of Keyboard Shortcuts — check to make sure it's not in a collapsed section).


Target iMac does not wake up with the main iMac

You can bring it back on by going to System Preferences / Displays and choose Detect Displays. It can take a couple of minutes to get it back, though.

Apple suggests a SMC reset when a computer that supports target display mode does not switch into or out of the target display mode as expected.

To do so, just:

Shutdown the computer which is not functioning as expected.
Unplug the computer's power cord.
Wait fifteen seconds.
Attach the computer's power cord.
Wait five seconds, then press the power button to turn on the computer.


How to get rid of the third party profiler 'SearchArchive'

This app is Adware and should be removed. Delete the app and then Files related to the SearchArchive adware that needs to be removed are:
~/Library/Application Support/com.SearchArchive/SearchArchive
~/Library/Application Support/com.SearchArchiveDaemon/SearchArchive
~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.SearchArchive.plist
~/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.SearchArchiveDaemon.plist

Removing these files should stop it from returning. Further info about this adware and how to remove it is given here.


Is there a way to see if a macbook had a time machine backup done?

From what I'm gathering you want to see if anyone accessed your computer to make a backup of it. I found this thread which might answer your question for how to retrieve the time machine backup logs from your Mac. Run the following command in Terminal

log show --style syslog --predicate 'senderImagePath contains[cd] "TimeMachine"' --info

which will show the most recent backups made. There is one change needed since log files can show activity of another account, if your Mac doesn't have your log in trusted as an administrator, you need that permission to do the search. Just add sudo to the above command as shown below:

sudo log show --style syslog --predicate 'senderImagePath contains[cd] "TimeMachine"' --info


Make Launchpad Appear on screen with mouse

There are a couple of solutions to meet what you're looking for
Assign Mouse Button
If you mouse has more than the standard two buttons (left and right click), you can assign one of them to Launchpad.
For example, on the Logitech MX Master series, there's a "gesture" button that you can press with your thumb.  Using the included software/drivers from Logitech (Logitech Options), you can assign the buttons keystrokes like F4 to display the LaunchPad.

If your mouse doesn't have this type of software, there are a couple of 3rd party options you can use

USBOverdrive (Shareware; $20) - This will allow you to customize the buttons, wheels, switches and controls to custom program what they do - like assigning a keyboard shortcut to them.  You can use it for free but with the "annoyance" reminder. However, the product is good and worth the $20 for what it does.

ControllerMate (10 building blocks Free; $30 Commercial License).  This one is very powerful and you can control basically anything that has a switch - mouse, keyboard, switch box, MIDI device, etc.  You can create simple workflows like sending a keyboard sequence (if this is all you do, it will be free) or super complex workflows where the press of a button will do any number of steps (I personally use this)

Activate Dock
You can "move focus to the dock" (the technical term) with a keyboard shortcut.  Settings → Keyboard → Shortcuts.  The predefined shortcut is ^ ControlF3


Enforce maximum content width in Safari (Lion full-screen on big monitor)

You can change the width of each page in full-screen Safari.

Move your cursor all the way to either side of the 'window', until you see the normal window resize cursor. Click and drag in, and the 'window' will shrink horizontally.

You can set a different width for each tab.


For Music anyways, check your EQ in the Music tab of Settings. Some sound quieter then others and vice versa.

For Speaker Phone I'm not so sure, but as a universal problem it may be Volume Limit, also found in the Music tab of Settings.


Which folder does 'iTunes Media folder' refer to?

You would have to set it too

/Volumes/SAMSUNG/iTunes/iTunes Media

And iTunes will follow through all the Albums and artist.

Sorry my mistake, thought you could still see your library. That setting only tells iTunes what folder to use to store/organize your files and it would rediscover them if they still were shown in the library.

Because of the change, iTunes has likely lost track of where your files are. The best way to re-add them is to simply drag and drop all the files into iTunes.

Do you have it set so iTunes organizes your music? If you do only then will this setting really matter for music. Otherwise it just uses the location it was imported from.

If you want to check if it works, try playing a song and see it if can find it.

Or right click on a song and select 'Open Folder Location' (Something along those lines, it is 'Open in Finder' on Mac). This should take you to the location of the song, if it doesn't then it hasn't been set properly.

While not necessary, close and open iTunes to ensure it is updates the library.


Macbook pro 13" OSX Mavericks F3-Key Function?

That is called "Mission Control"

If you prefer to use the keyboard rather than the mouse to switch to a different workspace, you can use control + ← or control + →


Take a photo using Siri voice activation?

At present, Siri is unable to actually capture a photo on your iOS device, regardless of language. This feature can be suggested to Apple via their general Feedback form.

Saying "take a picture" will, as you mentioned, open the stock Camera app in Photo mode. This is the extent of Apple's functionality for this command right now.


You can use AppleScript to tell the application to quit:

osascript -e 'quit app "Slack"'

this will tell the application to quit and will start all the save and cleanup tasks. Or you can send the TERM signal with pkill but it could be that the application will not shut down cleanly

pkill -x Slack


Tap Settings and then tap the iCloud icon.
Tap "Storage & Backup."
Tap Manage Storage.
Tap your iOS device in the Backups area.
Under Backup Options, turn off any items that you no longer wish to back up.
Return to Storage & Backup and tap “Back up now.” This will immediately remove the requested backup data from iCloud.
Choose “Delete Backup” if you want to turn off Backup and remove all data for that Backup from iCloud.

(via support.apple.com)


Should you unplug the cable once your MBP is fully charged?

Personally if I am using the machine I will keep the charger plugged in until I'm done, regardless of whether its full or not, if I'm not using the machine I will unplug when its full.

Read up on Apple's official recommendations, there is some good stuff here:

http://www.apple.com/batteries/

Follow the links at the bottom.


Mac mouse cursor-pointer SIZE does NOT change when shaking


Notification window placement on Mavericks

There is no settings in Notification Preferences to do that.

However, you can switch to Alerts, they will stay until you dismiss them.

Go to system preferences and open Notifications.

For each application you care, switch the notification to Alerts, so now you wont miss them on your screen.