texts: Is it possible to reset Accessibility Application that have been changed due to learning how things work?

texts: Is it possible to reset Accessibility Application? I want to keep learning about it but want to make sure I can get it back to settings that are not user configured.


texts: homebrew: how to tell if a formula is binary

texts:
How do I tell if a particular formula will be installed as binary of from source?

Is there a brew command for this?


texts: Reminders no longer separates items by line

texts:
Having just upgraded to iOS 9, I've noticed that Reminders is no longer able to take a copied list like this:

  bananas
  oranges
  cereal

My wife emails me our grocery list in this format every week and now I can't use Reminders to check off items as I find them in the store.

How can I ask her to format the list and/or paste it so that each item will be separated as unique items to be checked off one-by-one?


texts: Pause button started working for Chrome / Youtube, messing with audio player controls

texts:
I'm on macbook pro, 2017, Mojave 10.14.4.

Previously, I used F7/F8/F9 audio-buttons with Spotify only (it worked with iTunes if it's open together with Spotify but whatever. It didn't do anything in Chrome).

I don't remember exactly when, but recently it started working with youtube videos in Chrome, and the sad thing is that if both Spotify and a youtube window are open, it changes from Spotify to Youtube. (e.g. start playing a song in Spotify, open a youtube link, and it starts working for youtube only). This is very confusing, can I somehow change this behavior?


texts: Use "startosinstall" to install macOS Catalina on External Drive

texts:
I want to use "startosinstall" so that I can install macOS Catalina onto an external hard drive in order to preload MacOS onto multiple SSD's quickly.
I've researched into this and have found websites such as https://grahamrpugh.com/2018/03/26/reinstall-macos-from-system-volume.html which suggest using:
/Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall \

--applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app \

  --agreetolicense --nointeraction --volume /Volumes/External\ Macintosh\ HD

I've tried running the above but have had no success and always find that I get this returned:
Usage: startosinstall

Arguments
--applicationpath, a path to copy of the OS installer application to start the install with.
--license, prints the user license agreement only.
--agreetolicense, agree to license the license you printed with --license.
--rebootdelay, how long to delay the reboot at the end of preparing. This delay is in seconds and has a maximum of 300 (5 minutes).
--pidtosignal, Specify a PID to which to send SIGUSR1 upon completion of the prepare phase. To bypass "rebootdelay" send SIGUSR1 back to startosinstall.
--converttoapfs, specify either YES or NO on if you wish to convert to APFS.
--installpackage, the path of a package (built with productbuild(1)) to install after the OS installation is complete; this option can be specified multiple times.
--eraseinstall, Erase all volumes and install to a new one. Optionally specify the name of the new volume with --newvolumename.
--newvolumename, the name of the volume to be created with --eraseinstall.
--usage, prints this message.

Example: startosinstall --converttoapfs YES

but can't seem to actually get anything to run.
If anyone could provide me with some working code or show me how to solve this problem, I would be eternally grateful.
Thanks for your help


texts: iPhone/iPad unable to see iMac/Apple TV until router reboot (affects AirPlay, Remote app, Wi-Fi sync)

texts:
Every few days my iPhone (4) and/or iPad (3rd generation) lose their ability to "see" my iMac and/or Apple TV on the network. This means:

The Remote app shows zero sources available for Home Sharing (normally will show both the iMac and the Apple TV)
AirPlay cannot be used to send audio or video to the Apple TV
Wi-Fi sync will not work (states that it will resume when iMac is available)

Power cycling my router (a Linksys E2000) fixes the problem temporarily, but it always comes back.

Thanks for your help.


texts: Is it possible to install Android OS on an iPhone?

texts: Just wondering, is it possible to install dual OS on an iPhone 3GS/4?


texts: Full video+audio recording with QuickTime on Mac OS High Sierra?

texts:
An old (2014) link suggests that it is possible to do a full video recording (video+audio) on a mac with Quicktime, using only free software.

That seemed a little bit too good to be true, and when I tried it
out on my recently bought MacBook Air with MacOS 10.13.6 and QuickTime 10.4 installed, I wasn't surprised to see it go wrong. The main problem is that as soon as audio is turned on in a QuickTime screen video, it starts repeating continuously an unbearable sequence of (mostly strident and high frequency) sounds in the background which all but hides any other sound. And yes, I double-checked the "Use ambient noise reduction" boxes to be checked and the volumes to be set reasonably in System Prefs > Sound.

This background theme sounds a lot like a proposital handicap, to be removed by payable additional sofware. I googled and browsed apple pages, but did not find any real explanation.

Related (but older, and perhaps a little outdated) questions : here, there


texts: How can I see the sleep time(s) of my mac for a specific date?

texts: Is it possible to see when I put my mac to sleep on a specific date?


texts: How can I remove the Mojave download without installing it?

texts:
I accidentally clicked the upgrade message, thinking I was upgrading something else, which downloaded Mojave.

I was then presented with a window to install Mojave.  I don't want to install Mojave. It appeared I could not close the window, only minimize it.  But once I did minimize it I was able to right-click and select Quit.

I would like to completely remove whatever was downloaded because I'm afraid it will install without my consent. Any solutions to remove the download?


texts: Why does installing applications require Volume and mount on Mac?

texts:
I am new to Mac.  In the Windows world, installers basically would be msi files.  These msi files are typically a compressed database telling the msiexec where the files should get copied.  These files would get copied to the appropriate directories. There would also be registry entries indicating that the files should get copied to Program files etc.

Based on this, I have following questions:

In Mac/Unix since there is no control panel, I could be installing same dmg again and again. I would never get repair option.
Why are Volume and mount required?  Isn't the installation on Unix like copying files to a target system ?.


texts: My messages on iMessage won't send. It allows me to type the message and hit the send button but it won't deliver. iMessage is on in settings and I've tried reseting network settings on my recently purchased iPad mini. And I have setup my email on it and so has the person I want to message.


texts: MacBook retina 12 inch 2015: text garbled on URL bar of safari

texts:
What can cause this?
The URL bar is behaving weirdly and cannot be edited


texts: Mac stuck after trying to install updates, startup disk missing

texts:
I tried to install some updates on my Macbook Air. I received a notification  asking if I wanted to restart the Macbook to install the updates, I accepted and restarted. When booting, the Apple logo appears, the progress bar starts loading but then stops at some point showing the message:

A software update is required to use this startup disk. You can update now or select another startup disk.

I select the Update button, at which point the progress bar starts loading again, but it interrupts almost immediately showing the message:

An error occurred installing the update. Try again or select another startup disk.

I select the Try Again button, but the same message shows again. I then select Startup disk, and I am asked to Select the system you want to use to start up your computer. The list, however, is empty! At this point I don't know what to do, there are basically no options or buttons that I can press.
If I select the Startup disk button first, instead of the Update button, I get the same empty list of Startup disks to choose from.
Any idea what can have gone wrong and how to fix it?


texts: How can I set my mouse to click whenever it stops moving?

texts:
I have arm pain, and one helpful feature I've used in the past is where the mouse will automatically click whenever it stops moving and lingers on a spot for one second.

I swear I've used this before on a Mac, but I can't figure out how to enable it. Are there any settings or Mac apps that enabled us?


texts: Safari occasionally crashing when a tab is closed

texts:
For about a month now, closing a tab via cmd-w will sometimes cause Safari to crash. This happens about 7 - 12 times per day. Running latest Safari and macOS Catalina versions.

Crashed Thread:        0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes:     KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x00002de44e162918
Exception Note:       EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY
Termination Signal:    Segmentation fault: 11
Termination Reason:   Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0xb
Terminating Process: exc handler [5458]

The full crash report - https://pastebin.pl/view/0106fa96
Sometimes when this happens, multiple newly created but unopened tabs (i.e. tabs created from cmd-clicking links on an existing page) will not restore after the crash, so the browser state is not remembering that those tabs were created. Unsure if significant but thought I'd mention.
No anti-virus or VPN is running. As shown in the crash report, extensions are BitWarden and AdGuard.
This crashing has persisted after the most recent (Sept. 16) Safari update, as well as a reinstall of Catalina. The only thing I've seen suggested online that may help that I have yet to try is to make a new Admin account. I've created the account, but moving all applications, files, etc. over only to have it possibly not work again does not sound great, so wondering if anyone can provide some assistance before resorting to that.
Thanks.


texts: Menu command name for adjusting brightness

texts:
I'm trying to change the Increase brightness key from F1 to F7.

In order to do that, I went to System Preferences and tried to make a custom shortcut, but I realized that I didn't know the menu command name for adjusting brightness, if it exists at all.

I tried "Increase Brightness," "Brightness Up," "Increase Display Brightness," all that stuff but none of them worked.

Any help?


texts: iPhone doesn't automatically get inbox' child folder mail

texts:
I have the following folder structure on my mail account

INBOX
    folder1
    folder2
SENT
...

My iPhone (7plus - latest os) does only retrieve messages that are put into INBOX by my mail server, the mails going to folder1, folder2 aren't synced automatically and I will receive them only after I manually entered them inside the Mail app and do a manual refresh of the folder.

I would need to automatically receive those messages too, but couldn't find an option to do so.

Is it possible to sync folders automatically that are not INBOX?


texts: Adjust background color for pdf in Preview

texts:
I'm reading a lot of pdf's in Preview's full screen mode. Usually this means I'm looking at a fully white screen with black characters. I'm getting mad after an hour of reading..

Is there a way of adjusting the colours/contrast in Preview temporarily? For example in TexShop the white background is automatically changed to a grey-value. For me it's probably fine if I'd able to change the white background to grey, but maybe its possible to even change it to another color like the nightmode on iOs?

Is this possible with Preview out-of-the-box? Can it be changed temporarily/only on viewing? Thank you.


texts: What is the current Apple policy on purchases outside the App Store?

texts:
We are developing an app for a customer that will sell content. There will also be an Android and web app and they don't really want to pay Apple 30% and would rather use their own site to sell.

For what I've read online, I understand that it's ok to sell content for the app elsewhere, but it is not allowed to link to the store from the app. Do I understand this correctly? There was also something about prices.

Sorry, not sure if this question is more appropriate here or on StackOverflow. It's not really a coding question either.


texts: Keyboard shortcut to kill an unresponsive App on Mac OS X

texts:
Today I faced really tight situation on my Mac with Skype (yes, again!) - it went unresponsive, and was not reacting on standard shortcuts, and I wasn't managed to close the app by standard means.

I tried to use the keyboard combo:  ⌘ Command + ⌥ Option + Esc simultaneously, but it haven't open the "Force Quit" dialog this time.

I tried to call Activity monitor - but it was not possible either, as the App prevented me switching to something else or to open other applications... no standard means worked, even "Spotlight search" was unresponsive by keyboard shortcut. But I knew it still reacted on the keyboard, as caps-lock was working, plus I managed to power off external display, and the to power it on again via keyboard shortcut.

I'm wondering if is there any fallback for these situations, when an Application is totally unresponsive and prevents me from running other apps? It's the first time the app hanged the whole Mac that heavily, that I was unable to kill it or to open any other application to manage the processes.

Is it normal behavior at all, I was counting on it not possible to hang the whole system on a Mac, and one App can't make it totally unresponsive (OS X El Captain, 10.11.4)?

Update: found such the keyboard shortcut I never used: ⌘ Command + ⌥ Option + ⇧ Shift + Esc held for 3 seconds - forces quit of front-most application... not sure if it would work.


texts: How to use `login` command to take a screenshot of another user's desktop?

texts:
I just want to know if this can be done in one command without any interactions in macOS. There's an interactive way to do this (I first switched to the user abc and then switched back so that abc had a hidden desktop):

(in sudo mode)
login abc
(type the password)
screencapture <png-file-name>

In my test, this would take a screenshot of abc's hidden desktop and save it to the file. But the weird thing is that when I use -f option (only applicable in sudo mode) to eliminate the need of typing password, the screenshot becomes the current user's desktop, not abc's desktop:

(in sudo mode)
login -f abc /usr/sbin/screencapture <png-file-name>
OR
login -f abc bash -c "/usr/sbin/screencapture <png-file-name>"

Both don't work as expected.

su or sudo also can't meet my requirements, because they also take the screenshots of current user's desktop.

You may wonder why I want that. In fact I don't want the screenshots, I want security. I want to make the shell of this another user completely isolated from the current user, so that any malicious code running in this shell will not be able to take screenshot of the current user.


texts: Difficulty setting the 'Open with app' to an alias

texts:
I am trying to set MacVim, installed via homebrew, to be the default HEX file editor.  I started this task by creating an alias to MacVim.app located in /usr/local/Cellar/macvim/7.3-61 and placing the aliased app in /Applications.  This allowed me to see and open MacVim from the Application folder (more info here).

Now that the aliased app is there the "Open with app" selection via the RightClick->Info has the aliased app greyed out.  To make matters worse it does not allow me to browse/select the real app located in /usr/local/Cellar.

This doesn't seem to be asking to much here, any ideas on how to change this?


texts: iPad mini must be plugged in to turn on even if battery is fully charged

texts:
When I press the button to turn on the iPad mini it is asking to be plugged in despite the fact the battery is fully charged. Once plugged in for a few seconds I can remove the plug and the iPad mini will boot up fine.

iOS 8.3


texts: MacBook [Pro] - how many displays, what resolution/frequency?

texts:
How do I find out the number, type, resolution & refresh rate of additional monitors I can attach to my MacBook or MacBook Pro?

This is an attempt at a canonical QA, as per the Meta QA -
Where is the list of canonical questions stored for Ask Different?  to try prevent the myriad "same but different" questions we get on every possible combination of computers, cable & monitors
There are perfectly good resources out there that Ask Different should not have to duplicate the efforts of.


texts: Which model of Macintosh has the longest battery life?

texts: I was exclusively a PC man (specifically Dell, Gateway, and HP), but I am now planning to buy a Mac, because my sister has a Mac, with a battery life (much) longer than mine, and I would like to benefit from that. Could anyone suggest the best Mac to buy if I want the longest battery life possible. I mean really the longest, even if it sacrifices other things to achieve it.


texts: Why is Safari ignoring my /etc/hosts file?

texts:
I added some domains to block (127.0.0.1 mydomain.com) to my /etc/hosts file and for some reason, Safari seems to be ignoring them.

I have tried:

disabling Safari extensions,
clearing the cache (sudo dscacheutil -flushcache),
restarting Safari and the Mac altogether.

Chrome respects the /etc/hosts changes, but Safari does not. Attached is a sample of my /etc/hosts file.

I am running Safari 6.0.4 with Mountain Lion 10.8.3

Any ideas?

##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1       localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost
fe80::1%lo0     localhost
127.0.0.1       facebook.com


texts: How do I delete all Podcasts at once in iTunes

texts: I'd like to know how I can delete all podcasts (via command line) or something, because unsubscribing from 90+ podcasts takes too long.


texts: Using email addresses in App Store screenshots

texts:
An app we're working on has a field to accept email addresses. For a screenshot, we want to show something in the field.

Some concerns:

Can we use non-Apple domains? (e.g. outlook.com, gmail.com, yahoo.com) Or will Apple reject them?
Can we use Apple domains? (e.g. icloud.com)
Can we use obviously generic e-mail addresses? (e.g. friend@icloud.com, co-worker@gmail.com) Or does that open us up to lawsuits for misuse of personal property?
Should we just put in an email but blur parts or all of it? For example, leave the @ and .com unblurred?

What have others done? Would be interesting in seeing what has been approved recently.


texts: OS X Terminal equivalent of Ctrl+Left / Ctrl+Right

texts: In Windows and Linux I could always hit ctrl+← or ctrl+→ to skip a word to the left or right in the terminal.  In text editors it seems that ⌥+←/→ works, but no dice in the terminal.  I've searched Google and found nothing except a Wikipedia page that claims ⌥+B/F does the job, but all it does is print ∫ and ƒ characters to my terminal (or ı and Ï if I hold ⇧). Any ideas?


texts: Why can't I select tracks in Apple Music?

texts:
If I search for a song and select it from the search results, it starts to play as expected. But for some reason, if I open an album, I can't select a track to play, I can only shuffle the album and skip tracks until I get the one I wanted. The tracks are greyed out.

Why can't I directly play tracks from albums? I'm currently on my free trial.

Edit: This does not happen only on explicit tracks, and I have restrictions off, so it's not that.


texts: Setting up new Mac with old Macbook data

texts:
I have an old Mac(2010) and want to setup new MB Pro(2015). I want it the way I not only copy all settings but all installed applications(GUI based, command lines) as well as data. I found this tool, I wonder whether it's suffice? Also, new Macs don't have ethernet, will it be OK to transfer WiFi in multiple sessions?

I have around 250GB of data.

Update:

I was suggested to use firewire or Thunderbolt. Here is the image of ports on my existing old 2010 Macbook. Which of them is the one mentioned?


texts: Two pane file manager for Mountain Lion?

texts:
I recently moved from Linux to Mac, and am missing a two pane file manager.
I was thinking about along the lines of midnight commander, krusader (Linux) or total commander (Windows).

I installed midnight commander and am using it, but a GUI file manager would sometimes be handy.

Any suggestions for Open Source alternatives?


texts: Why does my mac keep showing the message “Your computer restarted because of a problem”?

texts:
I tried to completely reset factory my MacBook so I cleared all the partitions via internet recovery mode according to Apple support tutorial.

Then I reinstalled macOS and all the download process was successful, but I keep getting this message right after my mac downloading process gets completed and by the time the installation process is about to begin, this shows up.
This is how the partitions are organized:

MacBook Pro 2017
I would appreciate if anyone can help me fix this.


texts: How do I get rid of this power assertion from a dead process?

texts:
I have the screensaver on my MacBook set to kick in after two minutes of inactivity and require a password immediately after it does. Normally, this works fine, but in the last week or so, the screensaver hasn't come on at all. After skimming pmsets manual page, I made this discovery:

$ pmset -g assertions
2015-04-11 22:30:47 -0700
Assertion status system-wide:
   BackgroundTask                 0
   ApplePushServiceTask           0
   UserIsActive                   1
   PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep    1
   PreventSystemSleep             0
   ExternalMedia                  0
   PreventUserIdleSystemSleep     1
   NetworkClientActive            0
Listed by owning process:
   pid 71(hidd): [0x004d32870009146b] 12:40:26 UserIsActive named: "com.apple.iohideventsystem.queue.tickle"
        Timeout will fire in 7192 secs Action=TimeoutActionRelease
   pid 19013(AddressBookSour): [0x00332e3200050457] 486:17:00 PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep named: "com.apple.avkit.disableUserIdleDisplaySleep"
        Details: disable user idle display sleep
Kernel Assertions: 0x100=MAGICWAKE
   id=504  level=255 0x100=MAGICWAKE mod=2015-04-11, 12:44:09 description=en1 owner=en1

If I'm reading this right, the latter assertion there would prevent the screensaver from kicking in or the display from going to sleep. (Presumably the former assertion exists only because I'm actively using the machine.) The problem is…it belongs to a process that doesn't exist at this point.

$ ps -e | grep 19013
$

No wonder the screensaver isn't activating.

Am I right? What might be causing this assertion to stick around after its process died? Short of logging out or rebooting, how do I get rid of it?


texts: How does AirPlay handle with multiple source devices?

texts:
I have a bluetooth speaker and switching between two sources (Mac and iPhone) is a painful two-step process where it's required to disconnect the first device before a new connection can be made.

Could an AirPlay speaker act as an playback device for multiple sources at once? Or is it atleast possible to switch between devices on the fly (i.e. without having to manually disconnect the first one)?

Thanks


texts: Is it possible to use both the GPUs in a MacBook Pro at the same time?

texts:
The Macbook Pros come with two graphical processing units, one is made by ATI and the other one by Intel.

Is it possible to use them both at the same time, to render one image/3D model/whatever on one GPU and at the same time another one on the other GPU?


texts: iPhone in Lost Mode Can I use same apple id on new phone

texts:
My iPhone was recently lost, I put it in lost mode via icloud and I know it was found by someone because I got the email from icloud saying it's been found as well as a last known location...but it has since not come online anymore.

I have a new iPhone now which I want to setup like the old one but I'm still hoping the person who has the old iPhone returns it after realizing it's a paperweight to them without my apple ID(i had text saying reward available if returned).

My questions are:

-What would happen if I setup my new iPhone with the same Apple ID as the old one? Would that remove the old one in lost mode?

-What if I name the new iPhone with the same name as the old iPhone?

-I want my old phone number...what happens if I deactivate the old Sim in the lost iPhone, and have my carrier create a new sim for me so I can use in my new iphone? Would that mess up the lost mode?

I basically want to setup my new iphone like my old one but I don't want my old iphone to be taken out of lost mode


texts: Time Machine menu in system preferences shows no backups

texts:
Time Machine is saying that this computer has never been backed up... but it has!

When I enter the time machine, I can still access backups.

I checked tmutil machinedirectory and it points to a valid directory on the external hard drive containing all my backups. tmutil destinationinfo refers to the external hard drive. Most importantly, tmutil latestbackup refers to the latest backup on the hard drive.

I think I might need to run tmutil associatedisk or tmutil inheritbackup but I don't want to risk corrupting my backups without knowing more.

I tried running tmutil inheritbackup machine_directory (because it seemed less scary than associatedisk) and I got this:

Usage: tmutil inheritbackup machine_directory
       tmutil inheritbackup sparse_bundle
machine_directory: Invalid target

I'm not really sure what Invalid target means.

I've been reading the man page entry for associatedisk and I'm about 70% sure that it's what I'm looking for but it seems like a destructive operation and I don't want to mess it up.

Some important information that I should have mentioned, my hard drive was recently wiped clean and I reinstalled macOS. The last three backups are from Catalina (so everything is split into Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD — Data) but I'm running Mojave.

If all my backups were from Mojave or earlier then I think this is what I'm after:

sudo tmutil associatedisk -a "/Volumes/Macintosh HD" "/Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/Indi-Mac/Latest/Macintosh HD"

...but my most recent three backups are from Catalina so this might cause problems. I might need to do this for the Catalina backups:

sudo tmutil associatedisk "/Volumes/Macintosh HD" "/Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/Indi-Mac/<date>/Macintosh HD — Data"

...and then this for the rest:

sudo tmutil associatedisk "/Volumes/Macintosh HD" "/Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/Indi-Mac/<date>/Macintosh HD"

Is it enough to use associatedisk on the latest backup? I'm really not sure about this. I really don't want to mess it up. Am I asking this question in the right place?

I ran the associatedisk commands that I described above. It didn't solve the problem. The Macintosh HD — Data directories were renamed to Macintosh HD 1 and I can't change them back. I don't actually think this matters too much since I didn't really do much in the time that I was using Catalina so I could delete the Catalina backups if that's what's messing everything up. I can recall a short list of things that I changed and I've already copied them out.

Is it possible to recover from the mess I've created? I should have never "upgraded" to Catalina. Actually, going back to Mojave was equally regrettable. I'm guessing that if went back to Catalina and ran associatedisk, I'd fix the Catalina backup.

This is a nightmare.

I'm not sure what will happen if I click the "Back Up Now" button. Where will the backup go? How will it relate to the existing backups?


texts: Displaying weather in notification center

texts:
I was wondering how can i display the weather of a particular city of my choosing in the Notification center? I'm using an iPhone 5S with iOS 7.1

Right now it only shows the weather using the Location service. When i turn off the location service for the weather app, it doesnt show any weather at all in the notification center, although i have added the city in the weather app?


texts: Can a TrueCrypt volume be ejected (or the app quit) upon entering sleep?

texts: Is it possible to force all TrueCrypt mounted volumes to eject when my Mac goes to sleep or to have TrueCrypt quit (causing them to unmount)? I'm looking for a little extra "easy" security when I move my Mac around.


texts: iMac 27" Catalina with Split Fusion Drives

texts:
I need to have a clean iMac with new OS but experiencing problems.  Having commenced Recovery mode twice with new OS I am seeing Four drives.  One is the 1Tb SSD but the main primary drive is showing as iMac (121.12Gb) plus another two named as iMac2-Data and iMac2-Dat-Dat.  How to have just two drives, SSD plus primary drive?
Here is terminal screen image.


texts: Is it possible to charge my MacBook Air from a powerbank?

texts: I recently bought a powerbank that has two USB outlets. It's great for charging my phone and iPad. Is it possible to charge my MacBook Air from the powerbank? If it's not possible to do this "out of the box", would it be possible to build or buy something that would enable me to do this?


texts: If I have a dual booting computer (os x 10.7 and Linux), and would like to remove the Linux partition and return it to one single large disk running os x, how is this done? Is there risk to messing up os x? Do I need to clone the os x side, repartition, and reclone, or is there a simpler method?


texts: I've deleted several books from ibooks but each time I open the app, those books are there and I have to delete them again.  I've gone through this process probably 10 times.


texts: Troubleshooting the spinning wait cursor or spinning disc pointer

texts:
I have a mid 2009 MBP with Mavericks and am increasingly seeing the spinning wait cursor or spinning disc pointer - how do I try to troubleshoot what might be happening?
Indeed, in what situations does this object appear - are the situations purely internal in the sense of lack of CPU power or RAM or motherboard characteristics, or can external factors also impact such as HDD or network characteristics?
I presume that the spinner appears in response to the current application not to some background event, so, in troubleshooting I'd also presume you would need to look at logs of some sort of the current application and possibly of a general nature, things with which I'm not familiar.


texts:
I'm getting into Vagrant and I installed a plugin that update my Mac's /etc/hosts to add a domain and map the IP address to the domain. The only problem that in order to change the file, it needs admin access.

Is it safe to set the permissions of /etc/hosts to 664, where the owner and group has read and write access and everyone else can read?

Or should I use 644 where the owner has read and write and everyone else has read access?

Thanks,


texts: Disable special characters such as Tilde (German keyboard)

texts:
I am using my Mac to write Java code in Eclipse. Not frequently, but commonly enough I need special characters such as ^, ~ or `.
The problem with these is that I have to press the key(-combination) followed by a space in order to insert the character, since these keys are used to create special characters such as ã or è. However, this is really impractical since I can't use them in Java anyway.

Is there a way to disable this feature globally on OS X Yosemite (german keyboard layout)?


texts: What is the shortcut for changing my primary display?

texts:
What is the shortcut for switching the primary display when two monitors are connected. It is cumbersome to open up System Preferences > Displays and drag the menu bar across each time I switch.

Background: I have a makeshift IKEA standing desk and two monitors. One monitor is on my standing desk and the other is directly on the table (at sitting level.) Because I switch between sit/stand positions often, I want to switch the primary display so that all of my open windows are on the monitor I'm working on.


texts: Can't I use iTunes playlists from a shared library on another computer?

texts:
I've got a media center running iTunes, and it has some smart playlists set up.
I've also got a desktop computer running iTunes, with which I sync my iPhone.

I want to use the music and the smart playlists from the media center, and not the few songs I've got on the desktop computer. I thought that I could set up the media center to share its library and select that in the iPhone sync settings, but I don't see it.

I do see the media center's shared library on my desktop, and the songs play, so that bit works. I don't see the media center's smart playlists in the desktop's iTunes and also not in the desktop's sync settings.

Is this just not possible, or what did I miss? Both computers are running Windows, but I'm hoping that iTunes would work the same way regardless.

Bonus points for getting the star-rating changes I make on the iPhone synced back to the media center...


texts: Can I create a self-extracting archive for Mac?

texts:
In Windows I can create self-extracting archives, which end in exe instead of rar, and then you don't need to have an unarchiver available to extract them. How can I create a self-extracting archive for Mac?

I need to distribute for download a large (100 mb when compressed) archive from a server to many mac users. I'd rather use a better compression like RAR or LZMA, but I need to be sure that it can be opened by everyone without needing to install anything.


texts: Automator: Archive a folder, whilst excluding certain files

texts:
I am trying to create an automator based workflow whereby I create archives of folders but exclude certain files from the final archive. I would also like to specify the files or folders to exclude (e.g. ".cvs" or ".git" or ".psd" etc).

Here's how I have currently tried to do it, but cannot get step2 below working:

I specify a folder to scan and archive.
Automator/script recursively filters out certain files which I can specify (e.g. ".cvs" or ".git")
Automator creates an archive of the remaining files from step2.

Im certain there must be an easy way of achieving this with automator - any assistance would be appreciated.


texts: I want to backup my Mac partition, including the OS, so that I can use the backup to restore my hard drive to its current state

texts:
I want to dual-boot Ubuntu (14.04) of my Mac running OS X 10.10.3. I want to make sure that I can use my backup to fix any issues I might have dual-booting. I have a bootable USB with Ubuntu on it, and a partition on my internal hard drive to install it on, but I want to back up that Mac partition, including the OS, so that I can use that to get everything back to how it is now, no matter what error happens during dual-booting.

What is the best way to do that?


texts:
In Keynote I use a lot of animations to illustrate my scientific presentations. Often, I find myself wanting to move an object (and/or scale and rotate it), and have it remain in its new position when I advance to the next slide.

To do this, I end up making a new slide, and then creating a new copy of the object, positioned at the approximate location of where its action builds finished. Since I have to position it manually there's often quite a bit of fiddling around involved in getting the build to line up with the object's position on the new slide.

So I'm wondering if there's a way to do that automatically. In other words, I want to create a new slide that's a copy of what the previous slide looks like after all the builds are completed. Or alternatively, I want to create a copy of an object, but scaled and repositioned to line up with its location after all of its action builds.

Is it possible to do that in the current version of Keynote, or is my fiddly workaround the only way?


texts:
I'm having some difficulties in changing the value of $SHELL in OSX's iTerm app. iTerm is starting in /bin/zsh, but the value of $SHELL doesn't seem to change.

What I've done:

Changed "command" as /bin/zsh in iTerm's configuration window.
Executed chsh to change the shell to /bin/zsh.
Confirmed iTerm is started in /bin/zsh

NOTE #1: In OSX's stock terminal app, "Terminal.app":

echo $SHELL
/bin/zsh

NOTE #2: In OSX's popular terminal app, "iTerm.app":

$ echo $SHELL
/bin/bash

$ echo $USER
$ melvkim

$ chsh -s /bin/zsh
Changing shell for melvkim.
Password for melvkim:
chsh: no changes made


texts: Is there any way to set network preferences per Wi-Fi connection?

texts:
I work on multiple physical locations with different Wi-Fi's to connect to. Certain Wi-Fi's are within local networks that have specific network settings. I have added different "Locations" in the network preferences but those need to be changed manually as it's not attached to a geo location or a specific connection.

I was wondering if there's any way to automatically update my network settings (eg. proxy settings) based on which Wi-Fi I'm connected to...so that when I switch to a different network I also switch network settings?


texts: Why am I unable to download Mavericks from the App Store?

texts:
I am running Mountain Lion. But unfortunately, I'm having trouble downloading Mavericks Installer from the App Store.

Here is what happens: I search for Mavericks in the App Store, it shows Mavericks. I click on Upgrade. Then it asks for my Apple ID and password. As I enter the credentials, after a few seconds, the same thing happens, again asking for my Apple ID and password and nothing happens.

If my password was wrong, it should have shown a message indicating incorrect Apple ID/password.

What can I do to resolve this issue?


texts: How can multiple people do the same workout?

texts:
We have subscribed as a family to Apple Fitness+ and have it via a TV with Apple TV. All family members have access to the Apple TV already via profiles.
It’s possible to have one person’s watch synchronised with the TV, but is there a way of allowing multiple people to do the same workout at the same time?


texts:
I am trying to delete a TM backup on Mojave using sudo (this has worked in the past).

Any ideas why I'm now getting this error - apparently 4294967295 is a UID in the sudo command.

I get the same error trying to delete another backup in the list.

sudo version:

Colins-MacBook-Air:~ Colin$ sudo -V
Sudo version 1.8.29
Sudoers policy plugin version 1.8.29
Sudoers file grammar version 46
Sudoers I/O plugin version 1.8.29


texts: Where does System Preferences store the name of the Time Machine Destination

texts: I am trying to create a script to determine the destination of time machine on a number of computers I manage. It shows very clearly via Time Machine Settings in System Prefs. I need to be able to find that info via command line.


texts: Siri suggesting contacts for Calendar scheduling how to turn this off?

texts:
Let's say I schedule an event using Siri for tomorrow.  I say "Hey Siri schedule coffee tomorrow with Michael at 9 am." Siri will ask me which of the 9 Michael-s in my phonebook do I want to schedule the event with.

Siri forces me to define which Michael I'm meeting with and it's a pain because I know which Michael I will meet.   Does anyone know how to turn off this contact selecting requirement when scheduling an event?


texts: Can there be two separate Time Machine Backups on the same external drive?

texts: I'm interested in buying an external hard drive. I'd like to know whether if it's possible (and simple if so) to have two separate Time Machine Backups from two different MacBooks at the same time?


texts: Can iTunes find all songs with no Album Art?

texts:
I want to find all songs or tracks which don't have Album Art associated with them in my iTunes music library.  I want to do this so that I can fix Album Art problems in advance of a backup.  How can I have iTunes show me just these tracks?

My iTunes library is on a Windows 7 PC.


texts:
I just upgraded to High Sierra and started noticing a problem. When I open a new Terminal window, everything is fine. The output starts at the top and then fills the window. Eventually all rows are used (unless I run something like clear). This is the normal expected behavior. The problem is if I then open a new tab, the last row is not being utilized. It is always a blank line regardless of how much content is in the window.

If I go to Preferences > Profiles > Window and change the number of rows, the number of rows in the actual window changes (as expected) and the last row becomes useable again.


texts: accidentally deleted entire iTunes Match music library - is there a way to recover?

texts:
I'm slightly panicking here.

I don't keep local copies of songs in my iTunes library, instead streaming them on demand via iTunes Match, to save space on the SSD drive.

In certain situations such as buying music from a source different than iTunes, or if i decide to download an album for listening locally, the songs end up on my disc. So whenever i feel like it, i select all the music in the library and hit delete in order to delete the local files. My music is still stored on Apple's servers.

Today though, in a hurry, i must have hit the wrong button which, in a blink, deleted my entire library from iTunes Match. It disappeared from my iOS devices and from iTunes on my Mac without a trace. Gone. Help! is there a way to undo this step?

I should add, ~99% of my collection is not bought through iTunes, so it's not a matter of re-downloading previous purchases.

update: okay, shortly before this incident, i was adding an album to iTunes in ALAC format which i had reencoded from FLACs bought from boomkat.com - this was "exotic" music not available from iTunes, and the Match status said "uploaded" from all tracks. Now, when i added these same files again to my freshly wiped library, it didn't upload them. Sure enough, the status says "uploaded", but the process took like 2 seconds. The files were definitely cached on Apple's server, so I still have a little hope..


texts:
The problem started a couple of weeks ago. I noticed that when I had Google Drive actively syncing the Finder would frequently "refresh"; if I paused the syncing, this stopped. Moreover, if I left it syncing/refreshing for too long, the Wi-Fi would stop working, or the computer wouldn't wake from sleep. I was running Lion for I thought these issues might go away if I just upgraded to Sierra.

I uninstalled Google Drive; made Safari, not Chrome my default browser; and proceeded to make a Time Machine backup before the upgrade. While the Finder "refresh" issue has stopped, the connectivity issues have only gotten worse.

Basically, any time my Desktop tries to send/receive a large amount of data, it quickly slows the Wi-Fi to a trickle, and eventually makes it stop altogether. This includes:

Transferring files via "File Sharing" from my Desktop to my Laptop.
Downloading the Sierra update from the App Store.
Trying to re-sync my 900GB of Google Drive files.

Let me explain the symptoms. At first the Wi-Fi is working fine, and I can see all the signals around me:

Then after a while the transfer will become incredibly slow, and suddenly the list of networks around me becomes almost empty:

What is most strange is that some webpages will continue to load, and Dropbox will still sync. If I use terminal to ping (say google.com) it is around this time that I start to lose data packets, usually around a 2% loss rate. When this has happened for an extended period of time, or if I turn the Wi-Fi connection off and then on again, the list of signals becomes completely empty:

Nothing I do will reestablish the connection. Nothing will load, and I cannot access the internet until I have rebooted the entire computer:

I managed to hobble along and get everything backed up, and even got Sierra installed. However the issue has still been plaguing my Google Drive. I even re-installed it, and made sure Chrome was updated. I'm not sure if this is an OS X or Chrome/Google issue, as it seems to have a lot of symptoms in common with other peoples' issues for both situations.

I really need to access my Google Drive. Please, any help you can offer is very appreciated.


texts: How do I prevent Apple Remote Desktop broadcasting over a specific network interface?

texts:
I have two active network interfaces on my machine connected to two different subnets.

I run Apple Remote Desktop Admin to administer hosts on only one of the two subnets.

How do I restrict Apple Remote Desktop Admin and Client to broadcast from only one network interface?

Or,

How do I block incoming traffic from the ports Apple Remote Desktop Admin and Client use (TCP 3283, 5900) on the interface connected to the subnet I don't want to hear from?

I have looked into Murus Firewall (successor to IceFloor 2) but I don't really need any of the many other features that software offers.

If I could achieve what I want with the built-in firewall controls that would be great.

I'm running OS 10.13.4. Any help would be greatly appreciated!


texts: WD Passport 1TB USB 3.0 Time Machine external HD not being recognized on Yosemite

texts:
After upgrading to Yosemite my external HD is not being recognized. My HD is a WD My Passport 1TB USB 3.0 and I have a MacBook Pro Late 2011

It does not show on Finder
It does not show on System Information
It does not show on Disk Utility (even after using the Debug menu)
It does not show on /Volumes

Do you have any ideas why is this happening? Should I reformat my drive?

Thanks!


texts: How can I delete videos off iTunes Library on my computer but keep them on my iPhone?

texts:
My computer is running low on space, so after I sync my films to my iPhone, I want to delete them from my computer.

How can I do this, without having iTunes sync this deletion back to my iPhone the next time I connect my iPhone?


texts: Set up a Mac to run OSX (None Browser) application in pure kiosk mode

texts:
I've been trying for a number of months, using many methods, to run a Nuiteq Application called Snowflake on our 10 Mac Minis attached to touch-screens in pure Kiosk mode. I'm using Yosemite. These machines must be able to:

Run full windowless screens
Have the Dock and Menu Bar disabled
Access to finder removed
Not show the default cursor, and only use multitouch functionality in Snowflake

Unfortunately, I don't have build access to the application, and can't add things like NSApplicationPresentationHideMenuBarto Snowflake as it is proprietary software.

Initially I began by adding LUSIPresentationMode to the info.plist file of the app, with some success. The dock and menu bar was still appearing. Then I created a plist in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ that replaced finder with the app. It looked like this:

 <?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>POSIXSpawnType</key>
    <string>App</string>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <dict>
        <key>SuccessfulExit</key>
        <true/>
        <key>AfterInitialDemand</key>
        <false/>
    </dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.apple.FindertoSnowflake</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/Applications/snowflake/run.sh</string>
    <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
    <string>com.apple.finder</string>
    <key>ThrottleInterval</key>
    <integer>0</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

and I wrote 2 short scripts that loaded and unloaded the plist to stop/start the app. (The following is to start it)

PASSWORD=password

echo $PASSWORD | sudo -S killall Finder
launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Finder.plist
launchctl load -w /Users/snowbloke/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.FindertoSnowflake.plist

And this to stop:

PASSWORD=password

echo $PASSWORD | sudo -S killall -vu snowflake

And then, the software wouldn't hide the main cursor so I had to write in a keyboard emulation of Fn+F3 to the start the script. Otherwise there would have been 2 sets of interaction going on between the touch drivers used by Snowflake and the OS. This was very annoying.

osascript -e "tell application \"System Events\" to key code 99"

exit 0

Each mac logs straight into the app from start up.

After doing all of this and running tests over time, the users are still able to get into the OS desktop and finder just starts running. For some reason either the menu bar or dock turn up on screen. Is there a more robust solution? What am I doing wrong?


texts: Automatically tagging files that were last opened more than x days ago

texts:
I want to set up a process to run each day and identify files that were last opened x days ago, then apply a tag like "to review" to those files. Those files would appear tagged in Finder with the appropriate color / tag and that tag would be searchable.

Is Automator the best bet and, if so, does anyone have a script that does something like this that I can refer to?


texts: One user can't open anything after Yosemite upgrade

texts:
My Mac mini (early 2009) was getting slow, so I decided to do some upgrades. I got 8 GB of ram and a 128 GB SSD from crucial that their wizard verified as being compatible. I downloaded Yosemite from the app store and made a bootable USB drive following Apple's instructions. Then I did a time machine backup to an external drive. Finally I did the RAM and SSD install. I inserted the Yosemite USB drive I made earlier and did a fresh installation. On startup, I migrated files and settings from my time machine backup. I logged in to my primary account and did the software updates from the app store and rebooted. At this point my family started using the computer and is very happy with it. Startup, login, and application loads are very fast. There's no more freezes or beachballs.

However, one of the four user accounts is problematic. It takes several minutes to login and load the dock/ menu bar, versus seconds for all the other accounts. Clicking on anything in the menus/desktop/dock/dialogs results in a beachball for several minutes. No applications or files will open. Occasionally I'll get a "the application ... could not be opened" error dialog 10-20 minutes after trying to open something from the dock. How do I fix this account?

Some additional information: this computer does not have filevault encryption enabled, and there are no login items.


texts: How can I change a smart folder's icon without changing the default icon?

texts:
I want to add a smart folder for each label in the sidebar (I believe there is no way to directly to add the labels, so I have to resort to smart folder). However, all of them have the gear icon in the sidebar, even if I changed its icon and the icon is correctly shown in finder itself.

Note that I am NOT changing the smart folder's default icon, I just want to change them to a red, green, blue ... dots, just like the labels.

How can I achieve this?

More info:
Changing the icon itself does not affect sidebar look. I tried to change to a red circle:

Info window

However same look at sidebar:


texts:
I have encountered a strange behavior twice already, with two separate EarPods headsets. After about a year of using the headset, the cable near the jack gets slightly worn out and it causes really irritating behavior - when bent, it pauses/plays song while listening to music. It also hangs up a call just by bending.

Anybody encountered this behavior? Is there something I can do or the only thing is to just throw it away and buy a new one...again?

EDIT:

Just to clarify - it is definitely not shake to change feature. I tried it with the phone being stationary and just fiddling with the cable.
This question doesn't provide any solution or answer to my question - "what can I do".


texts: How to rename files by moving/shifting characters in file name (e.g. appended sequence to prepended sequence)?

texts:
I've searched high and low, but haven't come up with a viable solution. I want to enable sorting of these files by the sequence number in the file name, however the sequence is appended to the file name. If it was prepended I could accomplish my goal.

Currently files in finder appear as:

this is a great story_100.mp4
another great story of another time_103.mp4
yet another fantastic story_101.mp4
our last story_102.mp4

Trying to get to:

100_this is a great story.mp4
101_yet another fantastic story.mp4
102_our last story.mp4
103_another great story of another time.mp4

How can I accomplish this on a Mac? I've tried applications Renamer and NameChanger, the latter which supports regex, but I'm stuck. Lord this is frustrating...please help and many thanks to you in advance for the dear soul to lend the solution!


texts:
So I have a very odd issue. At random I get black sections in program windows, on dock icons, and on my desktop. What makes it odd is I can actually take a screenshot of it plus you can even see it through other visual elements such as the menu bar and dock and moving the mouse or a window over the area does not "erase" it. I've completely zero filled the hard drive and then reinstalled OS X Lion 10.7.5 11G63 however it didn't fix it. Yet booting into Linux Lubuntu 14.04.1 64bit has no visual issues at all.

Does anyone else have this issue or know how to solve it? It doesn't seem focused on any one wallpaper (I have 10+ from varying websites) or application. This is on my Late 2006 iMac, Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz, 4GB RAM, ATI Radeon X1600 128MB.

(black bar over user name was done by me, everything else was not)
I ran multiple extended tests in AHT thanks to this guide, however it could not find anything wrong.


texts:
Scientific articles are usually formatted with two columns. Is there a way to highlight text from only one column with Preview?

Like in my example I want to highlight only from Tree species to less so without the left column.


texts: Is there a way to temporarily pause iCloud sync of photos?

texts: Is there a way to temporarily pause the syncing of photos over iCloud on an iOS device? Sometimes I'm on a 3G connection and don't want to waste my quota syncing photos or sometimes I want to speed up the download of other files by pausing iCloud. Is it possible?


texts: Can someone describe how to encrypt a message using someone else's PGP public key on an iPad or iPhone?

texts: Can someone describe how to encrypt a message which isn't an email using someone else's pgp public key on iPad or iPhone?


texts: I cannot use my touchpad to scroll on my macbook. The arrow keys work but the touchpad will not. Is there a scroll lock button on the macbook?


texts: I just learned the feature of split view, does anyone know if there are shortcuts for that (moving a window to the left/right half of the screen)? If not, is there anyway to set up shortcuts?


texts: How can I find out whether my MacBook is supported by Lion?

texts: Lion requires MacBook Late 2008 Aluminium or Early 2009 to install/upgrade. How can I find out whether my MacBook is capable of running Lion if I forgot when I bought it?


texts:
I have a Mid 2015 15" Retina MBP and two external 4k monitors. Both monitors work when plugged into the HDMI port, but I can't get the second monitor to work via the display port, and need clarity.

I want to connect two 4k monitors to the laptop. I would like to connect one with the HDMI cable and the other with either mini display port or Thunderbolt.

I was under the impression that Thunderbolt could double as mini display port, so I have tried a few different Thunderbolt cables. At least one of these cables is known-good (it works for transferring data when the machine is in target disk mode).

So am I wrong in thinking I should be able to use a Thunderbolt cable as a mini display port cable? (A coworker suggested there might even be a firmware update needed, but I can't corroborate that via Google.) What am I missing?


texts: I want to leave the software on my mac and the profile and all that but I want to erase all passwords and history and personal settings from the mac so that a new colleague can use it?


texts:
I don't know when it appeared, but I have a weird superimposed red "W" in iTerm2. What is it, and how do I get rid of it?

I'm running iTerm2 v 3.6.6 and macOS 10.15.


texts: El Capitan install from usb stuck at boot

texts:
Trying to install a clean version of El Capitan from a USB stick to an empty hard drive. I'm unable to boot to the Installer though, it just gets stuck with the Apple logo and the progress bar underneath. The progress bar fills up completely, but then nothing happens. Waited over an hour now. Anything I can try to get past it?

It's a 2008 Late Aluminium Macbook.

Thanks


texts: How to move app bundles safely on the command line

texts:
I need to copy/move a bunch of macOS apps from some directory locations to another location. I know I can do this safely via the Finder. (By "safely" I mean that the app still starts up and works after copying/moving.)

However I would like to do this via the command line. Can I just use cp and mv like this:

$ cp -pr /path/to/old-location/myapp.app /path/to/new-location

$ mv /path/to/old-location/myapp.app /path/to/new-location

What about resource forks of files in the bundle? Or do other considerations warranting a better command line tool for copying/moving apps safely?

I am using macOS 10.13, High Sierra, in this particular case, but of course I'd be interested in a solution independent of the macOS version.


texts: Parental Controls preventing access to legit sites

texts:
For my kid's account on OSX El Capitan, I've turned on Parental Controls, with the Web settings to "Try to limit access to adult websites".   This causes non-adult websites to fail to load.  For example, edx.org works for a while then inexplicably, Safari/Chrome can't access it.  The same happens with nytimes.com.  ping and traceroute to these sites eventually fail also.

Why?


texts: DNS Suffix on two network Interfaces on MacBook Pro

texts:
I got a new MacBook Pro for my work office and have a network issue.
On the MBP 13" I use the integrated Wi-Fi and an additional a Belkin USB Ethernet.

Now, with those two network interfaces I connect to two different networks:

a) Work network (Wi-Fi)
b) Test network (Ethernet)

From both networks I get an IP via DHCP incl. DNS server address and search domain / suffix:

a) DNS Server 10.10.10.10
a) Search domain .intern

b) DNS Server 172.16.30.1
b) Search domain .home

Right now the Ethernet (b) is on top of the list:

If I now want to connect (ping) to a device in test network (b) it works:

ping ubuntu.work

But If I try to connect (ping) to a device in the company network (a) it doesn't work:

ping server.intern

I tried to switch the order of the devices (first Wi-Fi, second Ethernet) and then the issue swaps around (now .intern works but .work not anymore). For me it seems that macOS is sticky to the first (main?) network interface. I also tried to set the test network (Ethernet - when on top of the adapter list) to manual IP and to leave the DNS server / search domain empty, but even then the DNS from the second device (Wi-Fi) will not be used.

Does anyone have a solution for that?
Can't be that I am the first one to come over that issue


texts:
Is there a way to force OSX to display in monochrome(also known as grayscale)?

I'm working with a student who has ADHD (and I am mildly ADHD myself).  The colors are too much for him/her to handle.

EDIT: Ideally I'm looking to assign a keyboard shortcut or create a desktop icon.


texts: Sending multiple audio streams to different places simultaneously

texts:
Using only built-in macOS functionality, or possibly a Homebrew package, is there any way I can send audio from one music program (eg. iTunes) to a Bluetooth speaker, whilst simultaneously sending the audio from another music program (eg. Spotify) to the local audio device (ie. headphones or a USB-connected sound card)?

Some audio apps have a "Output Audio Device" setting, but neither iTunes nor Spotify has this.

Both a specific solution for the specific case above, and a general approach to sending n number of audio streams to n number of different audio devices (including Bluetooth) is interesting.


texts: How can I be auto logged in with the computer locked?

texts: I want to have the computer log me in so all my login items can get started, but I need it to be secure, aka it still needs to ask me for my password before I can actually use the computer.


texts: Can keynote pause on the first slide, wait for a trigger, then loop to conclusion?

texts:
I'm using keynote 8.2 and have the show working just fine showing 218 slides automatically. But I do not want it to auto start. I want the the first slide displayed until triggered, and then I want it to play through until it's back to the first slide and want it to stop there until triggered.
Is it possible to have a Keynote deck pause at one slide only, but play the rest through?


texts:
I am using Terminal to wget images from a list of urls in a text file, using the command: wget -i septweetsimages.csv.

When the operation hits url and can't connect to its server, Terminal continues in an infinite loop to try to connect, prompting the following result:

"Connecting to wtim.es (wtim.es)|69.58.188.49|:80... failed: Operation timed out.
Retrying."

How can I get the process to continue on to the next url in the list after say 2 failed connections?


texts: How can I copy and paste the complete contents of a PEM file?

texts:
I found out that I can view the contents of a PEM file by pressing the Spacebar, it's not possible to select the text.

How can I copy and paste the file contents, because I need to paste it in this text field:

https://api.playfab.com/docs/tutorials/landing-players/push-notification-basics/push-notifications-for-ios

The contents of my PEM file look weird after opening it in the terminal. Is this normal? Because when I open the file with Spacebar the contents look completely different and much more normal than these lines.

In Terminal:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIFtzCCBJ+gAwIBAgIIRA1/KqHYmg8wDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEFBQAwgZYxCzAJBgNV
BAYTAlVTMRMwEQYDVQQKDApBcHBsZSBJbmMuMSwwKgYDVQQLDCNBcHBsZSBXb3Js
ZHdpZGUgRGV2ZWxvcGVyIFJlbGF0aW9uczFEMEIGA1UEAww7QXBwbGUgV29ybGR3
aWRlIERldmVsb3BlciBSZWxhdGlvbnMgQ2VydGlmaWNhdGlvbiBBdXRob3JpdHkw
HhcNMTkwNjE4MTQzNTE1WhcNMjAwNjE3MTQzNTE1WjCBtjE5MDcGCgmSJomT8ixk
...
-----END CERTIFICATE-----


texts: iPod classic 1st gen - Transfer music to new computer

texts:
I used to use an old desktop to load music into my iPod. I no longer have access to it, but I now have iTunes on my laptop.

How do I prevent all the music already on iPod from from being deleted when I load more music from my new laptop?


texts: Is the expertsearchmodule process legitimate or malware? Mac Mojave 10.14.5

texts:
I recently found when using the physics stack exchange site that an unwanted program had installed itself on my Mac. This happened a few times before I managed to isolate the source. In some instances the program was called 'managerpages', and in others 'coveropen'. The behaviour of the program seemed to be the same in both sets of cases-it placed an icon on my dock and appeared as an extension in both safari and chrome. I deleted the  program from application finder and removed the extensions.

However, I now notice a process named 'expertsearchmodule' consuming significant network resources, sending and receiving megabytes of data in a short time period. I have forced it to quit and it restarts.

Can anyone tell me if this is a bonafide process, or something fishy. If the latter, is there an easy way to expunge processes from my system? I have tried searching for the process on Google but have found very few references to it.

Many thanks


texts: How to increase graphics memory in OS X running as a client in VirtualBox? I installed OS X in VirtualBox and I have 4 GB graphics but it is showing the graphics display as 3 MB. How can I increase the graphics available?


texts: Pages: How to expand comments by default?

texts:
I bought my wife a new iMac for Christmas and she's one of those people who fear change and anything different than what she's used to scares her to no end.

She's demanding Microsoft Office without even trying Pages. She has no real use for Office and Pages would be just fine for her but she's making every tiny excuse she can come up with why Office is better.

Now it's the comments in Pages. I don't use Pages at all so I don't know but is there a way to keep all comments open by default? She's complaining about the little square it makes instead of the bubble in Office.


texts: Must I log in upon connecting to a computer via VNC?

texts: Can I turn off logging into a computer after connecting via VNC if I have a password set for connecting to the VNC server itself? will I need to enter a password somewhere before connecting?


texts: Is it feasible to install Sierra atop a Mountain Lion that won’t boot?

texts:
My friend has a 17“ Macbook Pro, I think a 2010 model.

It has had massive problems for a while: trivial finder operations that typically take fractions of a second (like opening a new window or changing a directory) would take minutes to complete; apps would randomly hang for a half hour.

There was clearly something amiss and I was going to save her data, wipe the drive and install a new OS. However, in the meantime my friend installed an OS X update (not Sierra, but a regular package with minor updates).

Installing the update froze the computer for three days. The progress bar would move a little bit during the first day, then nothing. Once it was clear nothing was going to happen, we turned it off. Now, unsurprisingly, it won’t boot: you can see the apple and the OS’s progress bar; once that is loaded, the machine will reset.

I’d like to download Sierra and install it right away, but there’s important data on the drive, including an iTunes library that hasn’t been backed up in a long while. So it’s pretty important to try and build on the system’s old state.

Is there a chance the Sierra installer can fix the old system and do the upgrade, or do I need to find/download a DVD with the original system, and do a repair install first?


texts: kernel_task at ~1000% on a 2019 macbook pro

texts:
I use a MacBook Pro 2019 and it increasingly often starts to run kernel_task at ~1000%. Fans are blowing too. I tried to cool down the computer with some additional device and also used Fan control to max the fans (but found out, they were already maxed).
The temperatures in the image below don't look so bad, I thought.
Its pretty annoying and happen at different times. As of this writing, I was almost unable to finish a Skype call because of this.
Sometimes I also see fractures in my Chrome browser. I wonder if this has something to do with the graphics card.
What may cause this behaviour? And is there anything else I could check?


texts: iTunes Helper still running even if it is off

texts:
I want to disable iTunes Helper.

I have remove it from Settings > Users & Groups > Login Items, but it's still running after restart.

Did I miss anything?


texts: Error Installing Lion MAC OS on my Mac/book Pro Early 2011

texts:
Background: I purchased an old Mac Book Pro early 2011, It came with High sierra installed. Unfortunately I leave the mac on without the power cable, the mac entered into hibernation mode and eventually the battery ran out. When I tried to turn the mac on, the OS did not start.
The problem: My Mac Book does not boot, not even on safe mode, I tried to Re install the entire OS but the installation never finish, just when the installation is about the 90% the mac reboots.
Things I tried:

Using recovery mode to install the OS: I can access to the recovery mode, even the disk utility, but the mac reboots when the installation is about to finish.
Used internet recovery, same happen.
Reseting the NvRam and SMC did not solve the problem.
Tried with the Bootable USB, did not solve the problem.
I also tried installing Ubuntu with a bootable USb but never started, happened the same, the OS did not started and the mac rebooted.

In summary all the solutions always take me to the same place, when the installation is about to finish, the mac reboots and the installation never fully completed.
I noticed there are a lot of errors in the console log of the installation:


texts: Do any OS X apps ease Search and Replace across multiple files?

texts:
I'm looking for an OS X tool which allows me to search and replace a search string in multiple files. The requirements are the following:

Search and Replace
Search by regular expression
Search across multiple files
Search across nested directory structures
Replace expression can use values from the search (Regular Expression)
The tool has an easy to use user interface
Preferably free

I know that some text editors like BBEdit have this functionality, but I would prefer a lightweight tool that doesn't require me to open the files for editing first.

If there aren't any tools to match these requirements, I would also consider a command line alternative. I know that perl and sed support something like this - a solution that I can define either as a Bash alias or function would be welcome in this case.


texts: Yosemite window close button off center?

texts:
I just updated my 13" MacBook Air (early 2014) to OS X Yosemite. The close button on the semaphore buttons at the top-left of the window has the x in it off center! That's not something I expect from Apple! It looked fine in Mavericks. I don't have this issue with my MacBook Pro at work, since that one has a Retina display. I Googled for it and some people report the same thing, but nobody says anything about fixing it. Has Apple acknowledged this and plans to fix it? I used Linux in the past and I'm seriously considering installing Linux on this machine due to this.

Changing the colors to graphite centers the x, but I don't like graphite. Please help


texts: Minimising App Windows Into their Respective Icons On The Dock To Create Less Clutter?

texts:
The Dock is a fundamental part of using OS X, however I have some frustrations with it:

As we know the Apps themselves are located on the left of the divide** separated from the "stacks" and trash can.

Whenever I minimise an App window, it always minimises itself to the right section of the dock (where the trash can and "stacks" are located). However if I have several App windows open, the dock becomes very cluttered and full looking in appearance.

Is there a way to minimise an App window such it becomes minimised into its own App icon on the dock rather than taking up space over on the right hand side and creating a clutter. Moreover once this has been achieved, in order to maximise the window again, you just click once on the App icon - hey presto - maximised. If i'm making sense ?

** I don't know if there are official terms for the division of the dock into where the Apps are situated on the left, "stacks" and trash can on the right.


texts:
I sync my iPhone 4s with iTunes. In the past (way back in 3Gs days), I tried a bunch of apps, then removed them from the phone, since I didn't need them anymore.  However, for reasons unknown, they are still in the list in iTunes.  Note the screenshot:

For instance, I no longer use DeepFish and Bubble Ball, but they are still in the list.  How do i get rid of these apps?


texts: Method to determine if a mounted (physical or server) volume supports macOS extended attributes

texts:
Using xattr -w I want to write a proprietary extended attribute (XA) and an additional user tag to files. This also needs to happen on other volumes than the boot volume.
On specific volumes, however, e.g. on an attached exFAT-formatted SSD or on a mounted NAS volume, macOS XAs are written as Apple Double files: foo becomes foo plus ._foo. Since I can't know in advance, whether users have a process running that auto-deletes these kind of files (like the BlueHarvest app), I would rather write the XA contents to a proprietary dotfile in the same directory as the target file, and not use xattr at all. (That would be a single dotfile per directory, not per file.)
But for that I would need a shell-script-compatible method to determine if macOS XAs are supported on a specific volume.
Is this possible? If yes, how? If not, do only AFPS and HFS+ volumes support these XAs? If the latter is true, I could probably just run diskutil info "foo" | awk '/File System Personality:/{print $4}', and forgo xattr if the output is not AFPS or HFS+.
Related question: what about NTFS- or ext4-formatted volumes mounted as read/write using e.g. Paragon drivers? These volumes support XAs, NTFS at least to some extent, but do they actually support XAs written by xattr on macOS?


texts: Minimize graphic effects for better performance?

texts:
My computer becomes extremely slow when I connect TWO 27-inch thunderbold screens to it - a Macbook Pro Late 2013 (16Gb Ram/2.7 quad-core/Yosomite 10.10.1).
I am suspecting that the graphic card (NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB) isn't strong enough to drive the 3 screens (including the built-in Retina).
I am looking for a way to minimize all graphic effects to speed my computer up.
Anyone have a (possible) solution?
Thanks in advance for reading and providing with suggestions.
Best.


texts:
For some reason Dock process is using a lot of cpu and RAM ( 4GB+ at this moment ) as you can see on this image:

I tried to:

Kill the process
Restart Mac OS
Remove com.apple.Dock.plist/db and kill Dock
Logout and login again

Nothing worked. Note that i don't have VMWare or Parallels installed.

Any ideas of what might be happening?

If i login with another user, Dock works fine. But i really don't want to configure everything again :(

Thanks!


texts:
I am in the process of moving several VMs created in VMWare Fusion 5 into ESXi 5.1, which I just installed on a Mac Mini Server. I am able to connect just fine via the Windows application installed on another VM. I have created two OVF files, one for Server 2003 and another for Server 2012. Both files were created without incident. I am able to upload them to the ESXi server seemingly without issue as well.

However, when I start either of the VMs, I get the following error(s):

Console:

And in the GUI:

I'm unsure how to proceed, as I have followed the steps outlined to create an OVF file and upload it to the ESX. Both of these VMs work fine through Fusion.

Thanks in advance.


texts: Installing US International Keyboard Layout in Mountain Lion

texts: How can I install US International Keyboard Layout in Mountain Lion (step by step, please!)?


texts: Boot Camp partition is no longer accessible (El Capitan build 15A225f)

texts:
I have recently upgraded to the El Capitan Beta, which has caused a conflict with the Windows 8.1 Bootcamp installation on my MBP (see my previous question: Is it possible to Bootcamp Windows 8.1 using USB on Late 2011 MBP?).

At startup, the option to boot from Windows is no longer available, and the partition has become invisible on Disk Utility.

I am running 10.11 build 15A225f

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
    #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
    0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
    1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
    2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            250.1 GB   disk0s2
    3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
    4:       Microsoft Basic Data                         30.6 GB    disk0s4
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
    #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
    0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           +249.7 GB   disk1
                             Logical Volume on disk0s2
                             IDIDIDIDIDID
                             Unencrypted


texts: Do AirPods always output in mono when using microphone?

texts: It seems like when I use the AirPods' microphone, for example to record in Voice Memos, then the audio output becomes mono - as can be tested with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TWJaFD6R2s. Is this a limitation of AirPods? Is there a way to configure them to enable stereo listening while recording with their mic?


texts:
Is it possible to schedule a Mac to sleep just one time? I know I can set a schedule for it, but I want to have control over it.

So occasionally I'll go to bed but leave a file transferring, and I want the Mac to sleep about an hour from now. So how would I go about doing that, without setting a long-term schedule?


texts: How can I import OS X Mavericks server accounts from a CSV file?

texts:
I'm trying to create new users on my OSX server by importing short & long names from a CSV file. When I attempt to import the CSV I get the following error:

  The file couldn't be imported because it isn't in the correct format.
  Import files must be in delimited format and include a header line.

I've taken the spreadsheet file with the list of short & long names and exported it to a csv file. The top row has header fields with "RealName" and "RecordName". when I open the csv file in another program I can verify that it is comma delimited. What's going on here?


texts: Is there any problem I should watch out for in running the Nix package manager alongside Homebrew?

texts: I'm starting on a fresh macOS install and so far only have Nix installed. Can Homebrew coexist well with it or do I have to pick one and stick with it?


texts: How does one export all contacts from iCloud?

texts: How does one export all contacts from iCloud in some sort of standard format? I would prefer to keep a backup in case my sync goes bad and I'm yet to find a way to export all my contacts. I would hate to lose hundreds of contact details if my sync from the iPhone goes bad.


texts: iPhone 4 iOS 7 with no iCloud backup. Is there way to access data?

texts:
I recently lost my iPhone. I have no SIM and no backups (either local, or in iCloud).

Is there a way to recover the lost data? For example, the call history, messages, contacts etc.


texts:
I have an iBook G4, HDD wiped clean. I attempted to install Tiger from the disk. It got a bit into the install and it shutdown, so it did not complete the install. Also, it will not power up now so the disk cannot be ejected.

Is there a way to manually eject it, such as the old paperclip trick? Also, did it shutdown because although the disk is Tiger... which it should run, the installation disk was not configured for the iBook?


texts:
Odd problem here. I just turned on my hotspot and after a few minutes the blue ribbon is claiming that there are 2 connections. I am not at home, and my phone isn't hooked up to my computer.

When I saw that there were two connections, I fired up kali and monitored my network. Sure enough, there were two stations... with the same MAC address.

How is this possible?


texts: How do I assign a keyboard shortcut to a service in OS X?

texts: I created a service using Automator and I'd like to assign a keyboard shortcut to it. How do I do this?


texts: Droid base and iPhone cable for charging?

texts: I just got an iPhone 5c.  I had a Droid.  I have several Droid charging cables.  The Lightening charging cable I got with my iPhone detaches on the other end to a USB port.  The Droid charging "bases"/wall outlets have USB ports.  Can I recharge my iPhone 5 by plugging the Apple Lightning cable into a Droid base?


texts: 2012 MacBook Pro OS X El Capitan wont boot into windows 8.1 after a HD partition change

texts:
I had windows 8.1 installed with bootcamp and it was running fine but I ran out of space on the partition I originally created. I had read online that I could free up space from OSX by creating a new partition on the HD and re-claiming it on the windows side. I partitioned about 60 gb from my HD with disk utility and now I can't even boot to Windows. This is what my disk utility shows.

You can see that bootcamp shows up here and says it is mounted. It also shows up when selecting the startup disk.

However, I believe it showed as a drive previously instead of a folder. When I try to boot Windows from this menu my MacBook restarts and goes to a screen saying there is no bootable drive. After trying many things I thought I would just erase the bootcamp partition and start over but when I start the bootcamp assistant it says "The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows."

Any ideas of how I can recover my Windows partition or even just get rid of it and do a fresh windows install would be greatly appreciated!


texts: How can I determine after how many minutes of inactivity, Mac automatically logs off without admin privileges?

texts:
I cannot access the Advanced page under System Preferences → Security & Privacy to check or change the automatic logout settings. I don't think I can change this setting, and I tried using sudo in the terminal to change it without success.

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist com.apple.autologout.AutoLogOutDelay -int 3600

I'd just like to know how long I can be away from the computer without being logged out. I am on a university Mac desktop.


texts: iOS 10 broke my decimal separators, any way to change them back?

texts:
Since iOS 10, Apple has started using what I assume to be language-based settings for separators.

Until 9 it was using region-based settings for me.
I happen to prefer dots over commas but I don't really care about the appearance.

My problem is Apple doesn't enforce proper localization and my brokers(which are the apps I use the most) all happen to have broken locale functions that turn 1,000 shares into 1.000 shares and then interpret that as if it meant 1 point O shares.

I waited a few months but Apple seems to be applying no pressure on the infringing apps.

Separators appear as if they were something the user could possibly set in the Settings screen.

Is there any way to fix them without switching everything to US English?

edit: As of iOS11, the apps and/or iOS have been fixed. Still not able to choose the separators, though.


texts: SSD totally bricked after installing in different laptop

texts:
I've never had this issue before:

I had an OWC ssd in my 2009 macbook pro, and I put it into a 2008 aluminum macbook.  It worked perfectly.  Then, I took it out and put it back in my macbook pro, but the computer wouldn't start up.  It wouldn't even get past the grey screen (not even an apple logo!).  Now it won't work in either computer.

I've tried starting up in recovery mode: nada.

I put it in my external HD enclosure and connected it to my macbook air.  Nothing is showing up in the disk utility or in disk warrior (and yes, the enclosure works OK, I checked the SATA cable, etc, etc).  I'm at a loss for what to do next.


texts: Time Machine backup to different subnet fails after update to macOS 10.13

texts:
We used a Mac Pro running server app as time machine target. The Mac Pro is on a different subnet, so we had to add it as a time machine target via command line:
sudo tmutil setdestination -ap afp://user@host.domain.tld/timemachine

This worked pretty well on several machines. Today, I upgraded the Mac Pro from OS X 10.10 and Server 5.0 to macOS 10.13 and Server 5.6. This means, the time machine target stuff was moved from the server into the operating system. I checked the sharing settings:
System Preferences -> Sharing -> File Sharing -> timemachine, rightclick -> Advanced options:

Share over "SMB and AFP"
Share as Time Machine backup destination checked

Next thing I tried was a TM backup on my local machine. Failed with error The network backup disk does not support the required capabilities. My first idea was to resetup my local Time Machine. I thus removed the TM-target and tried to readd it:
sudo tmutil setdestination -ap afp://user@host.domain.tld/timemachine
Password:
Destination password:
Disk does not support Time Machine backups. (error 45)
The backup destination could not be added.

Same result with SMB instead of AFP.
Then I tried to run a backup on a different machine, same error as above. This machine still has the Mac Pro as a TM target as I didn't remove it yet.
I checked the logs on my local machine and found that TM is trying to use /Volume/timemachine-4 as target. mount told me that there are several mounts to the Mac Pro, thus I unmounted everything and restarted my local machine. After that I was at least able to readd te Mac Pro as TM target (via AFP). But a backup resulted in the same error again: The network backup disk does not support the required capabilities.
Does anyone know which required capabilities are not provided (anymore)? Or do I need to open additional ports in the firewall between the two subnets?
Update 1
After trying this and that, I again removed the TM target, but can't readd it, even after a reboot. However, the log tells me (when trying to mount via AFP):

kernel: (afpfs) AFP_VFS afpfs_vnop_ioctl:  SyncDir failed 22
backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Mountpoint /Volumes/timemachine does not support required Time Machine capabilities!

But I also see (besides some other NetAuthSysAgent messages)

(AppleShareClientCore) ERROR: AFP_OpenSession - Login failed with 80

Don't know whether this indicates a problem or is normal operations, e.g. due to falling back to some other authentication.
Update 2
The target share point on the Mac Pro is on a Thunderbolt attached Lacie device, which is still on the old Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system. Could this be the problem?


texts:
Please don't scold me because I know I broke the cardinal rule of updating...never shut down in the middle of an update. I was updating to iOS 5.1 over the air on my iPad and after the update downloaded it went to the screen with the white apple and the loading bar. After 15 min nothing had loaded and I force shut it down. Now when I go to try and update it says "Install Now" because the download file is still in the iPad, I believe. I tap "Install Now" and it says "Unable to Install Update an error occurred installing iOS 5.1" every time. I tried installing it through iTunes and it said my iPad 2 was ineligible for this update. My iPad is still working, I can play games and what not, so it's not "broken"

I backed it up to iCloud prior to updating. Do you think I should restore and reload from iCloud or can you think of a way I could somehow update it again from my iPad?


texts: How to hide Spotlight in menu bar but keep the ⌘Space keyboard shortcut?

texts:
I want to hide spotlight from the menu bar

I never click this button.

So I followed the instructions here and used this code to change the Spotlight file in some way:

sudo perl -pi -e 's|(\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x47\x40\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00)\x42\x40(\x00\x00\x80\x3f\x00\x00\x70\x42)|$1\x00\x00$2|sg' Spotlight

It hid the menu-bar icon, but it also disabled the ⌘+space keyboard shortcut that I use a lot.

Is there a way to hide the icon in the menubar but allowing the keyboard shortcut to work?

I just saw this other question asking the same thing but for Yosemite.

The accepted answer doesn't work for me on High Sierra, and all the other answers suggest using third-party tools like Bartender which I don't want to do.


texts: What do appleeventsd and AppleIDAuthAgent do?

texts: I looked in the activity monitor to clarify what are those processes and started with alphabetic order. I know different resources where many processes are described. But appleeventsd and AppleIDAuthAgent are not the case even for goole search - only issues results were found without explaining what does these processes stands for.


texts: How to make auto-complete work for AWS on ZSH?

texts:
I installed awscli from brew.

The amazon instructions refer to a shell script, aws_zsh_completer.sh that doesn't appear to be included.   I do have an /usr/local/bin/aws_completer.

How do I make the autocompleter for aws work on zsh in iTerm2 on macos Catalina?


texts:
I'm looking to change settings with a script, but I can't find where the plist data for the keyboard backlight settings is stored.

For example, in the System Preferences, I'd like to modify the preferences in the Keyboard section with a script. These ones:

Normally how I find a setting is

I run defaults read > before and defaults read -g > before-g
Then I change the setting in System Preferences
Then I run defaults read > after and defaults read -g > after-g
Then I compare the differences from the before files to the after files to see what changed.

But for some reason, this doesn't work with the keyboard backlight settings, and I see no difference from before files to after files when I've changed the keyboard backlight settings in between before/after.

How can I script the keyboard backlight settings?


texts:
I heard that photos stored in iCloud are automatically erased one month after the upload date.

Can someone please explain the retention period for photos, songs and other information to iCloud?

Thanks.


texts: Salt Water Damaged iPhone, Can I get the content off it?

texts:
My iPhone X keeps showing the Apple Logo, then cuts out and does the same. I have got a lot of photos on in that I would like to get off. Would that be possible?

Any software, or other methods to get the content off a dead iphone?


texts:
I am using Safari running in macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 for browsing the Web. I am trying to sign up to a website that requires reCAPTCHA identification. Safari has ad-blocker enabled and therefore blocks it.

How do I disable this? The web-page says:

(Captcha will load here (please disable Ad Blocker)

where the CAPTCHA is supposed to be.


texts: AirPods sound is quieter on the right side

texts:
My right AirPod connected to my Macbook Pro 2015 plays quieter than left.
But if AirPods are connected to the iPhone everything works fine and both of them sounds good.

Any ideas or Solutions?


texts: Occasionally, HomePod has trouble playing anything I ask it to, until I restart it. Why?

texts:
Every now and again, I ask HomePod to play something, and it replies with “Hmm, I'm having trouble playing that”, regardless of what I’ve asked it to play, or whether it’s in my library or not.

If I restart the HomePod (unplug it from power, and plug it back in), it works fine again. I don’t often ask it to play music; usually I just use it as an Airplay speaker for my Apple TV/iPhone/Mac.

Are there any known bugs that cause it to sometimes stop being able to play music?


texts: Preview.app: How can I quickly find all highlights with specific colour in PDF?

texts:
I have a couple of PDFs (some of which are 500+ pages long). In these PDFs I made a lot of highlights, when I read through them. I came up with a colouring system, such that each colour is associated with a particular theme. Now I would like to focus on one theme/colour. I.e. quickly jump through, say the Pink highlights. However Preview.app, in its 'Highlights & Notes' panel, only shows colour for notes. I am not able to see which colour I used on the highlights.

Can I somehow get an overview of the highlights and their highlight colour? Perhaps in a different program (Skim)?


texts:
I have an iPhone 6s, which has been reset to firmware defaults. I started it, did the initialization to get WLAN and tried to update the OS. Whenever I try it, I get the error, that the search for updates failed.

Next I captured the traffic of the iPhone on my WLAN router. The iPhone tries to access 17.253.79.204 and does the following two requests:

GET /assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate.xml HTTP/1.1
Host: mesu.apple.com
Accept: */*
If-Modified-Since: Tue, 24 Mar 2020 17:01:51 GMT
User-Agent: MobileAsset/1.1
Accept-Language: de-de
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Connection: keep-alive

HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified
Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2020 11:36:19 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=300, public
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Connection: keep-alive
Via: http/1.1 dedus1-edge-bx-014.ts.apple.com (ApacheTrafficServer/8.0.6)
Server: ATS/8.0.6
CDNUUID: 9baa646f-1e5f-4062-b6a4-a4679d31306a-1017952490
X-Cache: hit-fresh

GET /assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdateDocumentation/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdateDocumentation.xml HTTP/1.1
Host: mesu.apple.com
Accept: */*
If-Modified-Since: Tue, 24 Mar 2020 16:38:12 GMT
User-Agent: MobileAsset/1.1
Accept-Language: de-de
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Connection: keep-alive

HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified
Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2020 11:36:19 GMT
Etag: "a37f559a333d191f18284618a1b179fc"
Cache-Control: max-age=300, public
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Connection: keep-alive
Via: http/1.1 dedus1-edge-bx-014.ts.apple.com (ApacheTrafficServer/8.0.6)
Server: ATS/8.0.6
CDNUUID: 9baa646f-1e5f-4062-b6a4-a4679d31306a-1017952695
X-Cache: hit-fresh

It seems to me that the mesu.apple.com server does not give my iPhone any updates.

The question is: why?

The iPhone has been reset to firmware defaults. Why are the firmware defaults not sufficient to get updates? Is it possible to brick an iPHone by resetting it?


texts:
I'm thinking of buying either a high-end 13'' Air (i7 and 8GB RAM $1,549.00) or 13'' rMBP with an i5 ($1,699.00).

Setting aside portability, display and other differences which I'm still pondering, how does the 1.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 compare to the 2.6GHz Dual-core Intel Core i5 in terms of performance?

I do some photo editing and programming.


texts: Is there an app that allows users to create a map from an image?

texts:
I come from Android and one of the little apps I used to use that was very handy was Custom Maps.

It allows you to create a map from any image by selecting a few points on the image and defining their location.

Is there an app in the App store that allows this?


texts: If I set up Apple Mail, will it delete my emails?

texts:
I was trying to set up Apple Mail on my Mac because someone emailed me a .eml file that I seem to need Apple Mail in order to open. When I tried setting up my Gmail account in Apple Mail, it asked me to give permission for the app to read, edit, and delete emails.
What I Want To Know: Under what circumstances would Apple Mail actually delete my emails from a Gmail account that I set up with it? Would it only be when I manually delete them in the Apple Mail app?


texts: Create a symlink pointing to a variable filepath

texts:
I am using MacVim installed via homebrew. The absolute path to the app is /usr/local/Cellar/macvim/xxxxxx/MacVim.app, with xxxxxx the version number. MacVim version number is updated often.

Now I like my app to be accessible through the Dock and the Launchpad. I have created a symlink in /Applications pointing to /usr/local/Cellar/macvim/8.2-163_2/MacVim.app (for now) so MacVim.app is visible in the Launchpad, and I dragged the symlink in the Dock to access it quickly. Of course, next time MacVim is updated, the version will change and I will have to fix the symlink.

What can I do to have a more permanent solution that does not require fixing the symlink every time MacVim is updated?

The solution I thought could work:

Use a crontab to regularly update the symlink
Or use launchctl to do the same
Configure homebrew, if possible, to use the same directory always
Configure homebrew to hook some script after updating MacVim to update symlink
Create a node with custom driver that open(), read() and close() the right file

I implemented solution #1 and #2 in the past, but I find it quite messy. Every minute, the command to update the symlink is run, but 99.99% of the time it does nothing Looks more like a hacky solution to me. If possible, I would prefer to run the command when it is needed only. Solution #3 and #4 are much better, but I haven't found anything about hook in homebrew. And solution #5 seems a bit hardcore for such a trivial task.

Or am I missing something obvious?

A bit more explanations as requested in comment

Solution 1

A one line command in the crontab can be used:

* * * * * ln -fs "$(find '/usr/local/Cellar/macvim' -name 'MacVim.app' | head -n 1)" /Applications/MacVim.app

Solution 2

Same as crontab, but using a scheduled task. I don't find this solution particularly better than the crontab except it is using a more "modern" scheduler.

Solution 3 and 4

That's a guess, but I was hoping there were some feature in homebrew to run a command after a package is being updated. Then I would simply run the same command as in the crontab when MacVim is updated. What I like with this solution, is that the command is only run when it is needed, not every minute.

Solution 5

I haven't looked in depth in this solution as it is definitely more advanced. I only know it is possible to create a custom character device with a custom driver. The only requirement is to implement the open, read and close command. So technically, everytime the system asks for /Applications/MacVim.app, what it really does being the scene is to list the content of the folder /usr/local/Cellar/macvim, take the first folder in the list, and read the content of the MacVim.app file in the said folder. Similar to a symlink, but specific to my need.


texts: Disabling QuickType into my html form fields

texts:
I'm creating several html forms.

People asked me to remove the QuickType functionality introduced with iOS 8 for some of those forms fields cause sometime it's irrevelant and use screen place for nothing.

It's seems QuickType only appears for <input type="text">.

Even it has not been designed for that, I tried the autocomplete="off" and it doesn't work without a surprise.

I don't want to globaly desactivate QuickType into the parameters or to temporary hide it with a swipe down.

PS : QuickType is not yet a tag, I propose to add it


texts: AppleScript to return condition depending on audio file length

texts:
I'd like to use Hazel (a rule-based file system automator) for macOS to automatically move mixtape audio files from one folder to another, if their duration is longer than 30 minutes.

Hazel doesn't provide a built-in method of checking for audio file length (that I know of), but it provides the ability to run rules if an AppleScript condition is passed, i.e. return true.

Judging from the screenshot below, I think it works if length of theFile > 30*60 seconds: return true (pseudo code).

I'm not however sure how to accomplish this via AppleScript. Any ideas how to do it, or where to start? A search online didn't provide many basic ideas, but it seems to be possible.

Note: Giving advice on AppleScripts is outside the scope of the Hazel support AFAIK, so I can't get any help from them.