How do I force send a text message in iOS 10? When I'm out of the country and don't have wifi or data and I want to send a text message to another iPhone back in the UK, it won't let me send a standard text message . It wants me to send an iMessage as it recognises I'm sending to another iPhone , but I do not have any data allowance or wifi so it won't let me send an iMessage anyway and I can't find a way for forcing it to send a text SMS message.

I've looked in settings and turned off my iMessage, and the option to send text SMS only is not there anymore. I used to be able to do this before iOS 10.
Is there a way I can send a standard text?

Go to settings and turn off iMessage.
Send your message.
(Optional) go back to settings and turn iMessage back on.

I just verified that this works in iOS 10.

You can go in Settings > Messages > Send as SMS


How to type a TAB character on an iPhone I'm editing a plain text file on my iPhone and need to type a TAB (\t) character. However, I am unable to find it and starting to wonder if it even exists.

Anyone able to help me out?

following answer is not to insert tab, but for indent line.

(currently 2016/05)
for the user of iPhone while using Note app,

on the line you want to indent, touch screen on the current cursor
then pop-up appear for more editing, you can select indent among of these.

To insert tab, on the line you want to insert tab, touch the current cursor
then a pop-up appear should appear for more editing. Select Insert; then tab.


Hide the brightness and volume bezels in Catalina? In macOS Mojave I followed the instructions here to hide the brightness and volume overlays:

Move the position of or hide the brightness/volume pop ups on high sierra

But this doesn't work anymore in Catalina:

$ csrutil status
System Integrity Protection status: disabled.
$ sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.OSDUIHelper Disabled -bool YES
2019-10-09 18:08:46.109 defaults[6792:141312] Could not write domain /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.OSDUIHelper; exiting
$ sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.BezelUI Disabled -bool YES
2019-10-09 18:09:06.500 defaults[6824:141922] Could not write domain /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.BezelUI; exiting

How can I hide the brightness and volume overlays in macOS Catalina?

I think the answer here is still valid for a single user. The multiple users answer doesn't work on Mojave anymore as far as I can tell.


MacBook turning off suddenly I have such MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013), and I noticed such "feature": for example, I have 50 (it could be any number) percent of battery, charger cable does not connect. I can surf the browser and make some light work all nice, but if I try to open (for example) Video Editor or some development tools, something that requires more power from my laptop, so my Mac just suddenly turning off... Then if I try to turn it on again I see standard image(notification) like "You need to change your Mac". That's it.

Ok, then I connect the charger to Mac, wait a minute and successfully turning it on... And see that I still have like 50 percent of battery.

Firstiful I think, that I think that I need to change the battery (actually I have 600 cycles), but I am not sure, because as far as I know this battery can easily work up to 1000 cycles of charge, and secondly I tried to find something in google like "Mac turns off, battery issue" and similar questions, but nothing...

So, question is - how can I check if it is a battery issue or anything else?

Image from CoconutBattery app

Image from DaisyDisk

EDIT

I also tried to run the Apple Hardware Test as @Monomeeth suggested(turn on + hold D or Option D)

The first image that I saw was this one

Then I was asked to choose Wifi and fill in the password and after a few moments I got such message

Your MacBook Pro battery has a life expectancy at or around 1,000 cycles.  It's not uncommon for batteries to exceed or fall short of this number; as every user is different in terms of what they use their computers for and how/when they're using AC power etc. So the 1,000 cycles is just an estimation of how long it can last. At 658 cycles it's more than likely that your battery is still okay, but it's also not unheard of that it could be on its way out.

If I was you I'd try resetting the SMC.

Reset the SMC

To reset the System management Controller on your particular MBP, follow these steps:

Shut down your computer
Keep the power cable plugged in
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button and hold all these down for at least 10 seconds
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.

Now use your computer to determine if the issue still persists. If it does you could run Apple Hardware Test.

Running Apple Hardware Test

Your model MBP uses Apple Hardware Test to test its hardware. You can do this as follows:

Fully shut down your MBP
Disconnect any external hardware connected to your MBP1
Restart your MBP
Immediately press the D key and keep it down until you see the Apple Hardware Test icon appear
When prompted, select your language and click on the right arrow
When the AHT console appears, you can choose to run Basic tests by clicking the Test button. However, I suggest you select the "Perform extended testing" checkbox before you click the Test button.
Your test results will appear in the window in the bottom-right of the console.

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

Note 2: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete. Be aware that if you connect to the internet via an ethernet cable instead of Wi-Fi, then keep this cable plugged in during the process.

1 If you need to use an external keyboard, mouse or display you can keep these connected. However, if you don't need to, then test your MBP without these being connected.

the app indicates your battery has already 658 cycles. batteries of that macbooks lives only 500 cycles. you have to replace the battery


sendmail fails complaining: create file maildrop Permission denied When trying to use sendmail from a script, it fails with

postdrop: warning: mail_queue_enter: create file maildrop/690025.14220: Permission denied

Output from ls -la /var/spool/postfix looks like this which is identical to the output on another Mac with working sendmail:

total 0
drwxr-xr-x  16 root      wheel      544 24 Sep  2016 .
drwxr-xr-x   6 root      wheel      204 21 Okt  2016 ..
drwx------   2 _postfix  wheel       68  8 Jan 17:22 active
drwx------   2 _postfix  wheel       68 11 Feb  2017 bounce
drwx------   2 _postfix  wheel       68 24 Sep  2016 corrupt
drwx------  11 _postfix  wheel      374 11 Feb  2017 defer
drwx------  11 _postfix  wheel      374 11 Feb  2017 deferred
drwx------   2 _postfix  wheel       68 24 Sep  2016 flush
drwx------   2 _postfix  wheel       68 24 Sep  2016 hold
drwx------   2 _postfix  wheel       68  8 Jan 17:22 incoming
drwx-wx---   2 _postfix  _postdrop   68 12 Feb  2017 maildrop
drwxr-xr-x  10 root      wheel      340  8 Jan 17:22 pid
drwx------  26 _postfix  wheel      884  8 Jan 17:22 private
drwx--x---   7 _postfix  _postdrop  238  8 Jan 17:22 public
drwx------   2 _postfix  wheel       68 24 Sep  2016 saved
drwx------   2 _postfix  wheel       68 24 Sep  2016 trace

I've searched the net for solutions and tried them, but they don't seem to work.
sudo postfix check gives me these messages:

postfix: Postfix is running with backwards-compatible default settings
postfix: See http://www.postfix.org/COMPATIBILITY_README.html for details
postfix: To disable backwards compatibility use "postconf compatibility_level=2" and "postfix reload"
/usr/sbin/postconf: warning: /etc/postfix/main.cf: unused parameter: mydomain_fallback=localhost

The last line is repeated approx. 20 times.

sudo postfix set-permissions results in the same output, plus

chown: /usr/libexec/postfix: Operation not permitted

When I try sendmail with sudo (no idea if that should work), I get

postdrop: warning: unable to look up public/pickup: No such file or directory

Any ideas how to fix that?

Unfortunately I only found the solution reinstalling postfix... workaround I know... and then killall postdrop.

apt-get install --reinstall postfix

killall postdrop


why does an m1 Mac think that a side loaded iOs app is jailbroken? I took an iPhone 11 running the latest iOs at this time (14.4.1) and connected it up to a Mac running Mojave. I pull an app out of it as an ipa file. I copied the ipa file to the M1 Mac and double clicked it. The M1 Mac then said it was installing the app! I double clicked on the installed app and it said it would run on a jailbroken iPhone?!
My iPhone is not jailbroken and the original app runs fine on it.

The App is doing this check, not your computer. Apps use a variety of techniques, usually involving checking for the presence or lack of specific files that indicate the possibility of a jailbroken iPhone.
This app has implemented their check poorly, causing it to trigger on your Mac. You should contact the developers of the application and tell them to remove the jailbreaking checks.
Note: Of course, if the developer did not list it on the App Store they may not be receptive to making changes to accommodate running it on the Mac.

The .ipa file is called as an iOS App containing jailbroken apps, Any jailbroken apps like unc0ver, AltStore and AppCake. Uninstall it before it starts jalbreaking your iPhone.


why does OSX add extra '._' when I tar a directory? I'd just like to know why if I "tar -czf" a file/directory, osx adds a:  ._  for each file? I see these when I untar in linux. Or when I work with the uncompressed project in eclipse as it doesn't like them at all.
I use 10.7.5.

OS X's tar uses the AppleDouble format to store extended attributes and ACLs. tar and Archive Utility also know how to convert the ._ files back to the native formats, but the ._ files are kept if the archive is extracted on another platform or on a non-HFS volume.

You can usually just tell tar to remove the metadata by setting COPYFILE_DISABLE to some value:

$ xattr -l file.jpg
com.apple.quarantine: 0002;50d20c48;Tweetbot;
$ tar -cf 1.tar file.jpg
$ tar -tf 1.tar
./._file.jpg
file.jpg
$ COPYFILE_DISABLE=1 tar -cf 2.tar file.jpg
$ tar -tf 2.tar
file.jpg

Information stored as extended attributes:

Resource forks (since 10.4)

Custom icons set in Finder and the images of Icon\r files
Metadata in PSD files
Script objects stored in scpt files, AppleScript Editor window state

Information about aliases
Quarantine status, download URLs
Spotlight comments
Encoding of files saved with TextEdit
Caret position of files saved with TextMate
Skim notes

You can see ACLs with ls -le:

$ ls -led /Applications/
drwxrwxr-x@ 146 root  admin  4964 Jun 17 22:53 /Applications/
 0: group:everyone deny delete

Those files were always there, but they are invisible in Finder (and most Mac OS applications).  See https://superuser.com/questions/212896/

edit

That is: these files contain the extended file attributes ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_file_attributes ... and they were created as soon as MacOS gave extended attributes to the files.  So these ._* files were not created for the tar archive.


iTunes cannot convert Apple Lossless tracks to 128 kbps AAC files when sync'ing with iPhone I'm using the Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC option in iTunes when sync'ing music to my iPhone.

iTunes is complaining about three tracks from an album I recently ripped every time I sync my phone. It claims they can't be converted (I rip as Apple Lossless). Unfortunately there's not much in the way of detailed information in the error messages iTunes is giving me.

Does iTunes maintain a parallel, down-sampled, library on disk when I check this option? Could I downsample my Apple Lossless files myself, save them in this parallel library, and stop iTunes from trying to do the conversion on sync? I took a look in my iTunes Media folder for a parallel library but couldn't find anything.

Is the conversion done as the songs are transferred to my iPhone and the converted files live no other place than on my phone?

This is iTunes 10 on OS X 10.6 with an iPhone 3GS.

I had a similar problem with few of my tracks. The conversion is done live, while syncing. Basicly the problem is with the particular sound track, not the lossless codec (ALAC) itself. I used a third party utility to re-encode the original (keeping it to ALAC) and then iTunes managed to re-encode the track back to 128kBit AAC. Hope this helps.

  Does iTunes maintain a parallel, down-sampled, library on disk when I check this option?

No - re-encoding is done live, that's why it's so slow.

I had two songs that did not work. One could be fixed by "remove download" and then pressing the cloud symbol and redownload the song. The other one is still problematic and me be it has to be recoded. I guess apple repaired one of the songs.


Do these iPhone log messages indicate spyware? I've seen these messages in my iPhone log and I was wondering whether someone is using spyware on my iPhone:

{"message":{"Accel":1,"Baseband":1,"Bt":1,"Duration":1,"DurationExitFromNoHints":1,"Gps":1,"VehicularDuration":3300,"Wifi":1},
"name":"VehicularStateDetectionLatencyStats","uuid":"6101aa5f-34b5-456c-b761-e4dea7fcd935"}
{"message":{"Accel":2,"Baseband":2,"Bt":2,"Duration":2,"DurationExitFromNoHints":2,"Gps":2,"VehicularDuration":3360,"Wifi":2},
"name":"VehicularStateDetectionLatencyStats","uuid":"6101aa5f-34b5-456c-b761-e4dea7fcd935"}

No, these messages do not indicate that anyone is using spyware on your iPhone.

These messages are indication of the Apple provided software is functioning as it should collecting analytics/diagnostics data stored on your phone. This is not an indication of anything malicious.

I would say yes, someone is watching everything we do and store it for later. Like if you have Google Maps authorities could pull up your car or how fast your going ect...or maybe it’s your Ins watching your patterns???


Downgrading from iOS 7 to a recent full backup of iOS 6.1.3 I have a device (iPhone 4S) that is running iOS 7, but I was wondering: Is it possible to restore a full backup of the same device running iOS 6.1.3.

I'm not worried about losing data from the iOS 7, but I would like to restore the device to its previous state under iOS 6.

Is this possible?

Again, to reiterate: I'm not looking for clean downgrade/install of iOS 6, I wish to restore a full back-up containing an earlier iOS. Thanks.

Note: this will only work if downgrading from a prerelease beta OS to a regular version.

You can only ever restore an iOS device to the latest public version.

Downgrading is super easy: Just put your iPhone into DFU mode (plug into iTunes, power off, hold down Sleep/Wake and Home button for 8 seconds, let go of the power button and continue to hold down the home button until iTunes alerts you. The screen should be black) and follow iTunes through there.

It doesn't look like it:

  Newer devices like the iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPad 4, iPad 3, iPad 2, iPad mini and the iPod touch 5G are regrettably “stuck” on whichever firmware they’re currently running – no downgrade method exists, as of now.

http://www.evasionjailbreak.com/untethered-6.1.3-jailbreak-6.1.4-ios-7-guide-for-iphone-5s-and-future-devices/

Also: http://jailbreakmeme.com/you-cannot-downgrade-ios-7-to-6-1-3-iphone-ipad-ipod-touch/


How to disable battery charging? From the pmset man page:

  POWER SOURCE ARGUMENTS

  -g with a 'batt' or 'ps' argument will show the state of all attached power sources.

  […] Certain Apple battery calibration tools may temporarily disable
  battery charging, even though your Apple portable is plugged into AC
  power.

  Such tools will never surprise you with this behavior; you will know
  it's happening. This state will be reflected in an additional line of
  output to 'batt' or 'ps' readings, including the pid of the app
  inducing this behavior.

     'ChargeInhibit':    1432

So, does any piece of publicly available software exist to force the battery not to charge?

If you use a small piece of tape to block the middle (signal) pin on your MagSafe charger, your Mac will not charge because it can't identify the charger.

When I opened the cord (between the transformer and the magsafe connector) for the charger on my macbook pro, there were only 2 wires.
 Therefore its seems likely that the tiny middle pin on the magsafe connector does not do anything electrical !


iTunes Match Alternative ... or some way of implementing this We’ve been using iTunes Match pretty much since the beginning, but recently my wife has turned it off and refused to re-subscribe. I’m fast getting to the same place. It just seems so unstable, wishing Apple would invest some of their billions into it. I read with dismay how many people find Google Play to be so much better. As I write this I see a “Cannot connect to iTunes store” on my iPhone. Noting wrong with our connection … it’s alive and well.

Bearing in mind that I have two Macs, an iPhone and an iPad and my wife has a Mac, iPhone and iPad what we really want is the following.

I want all our music to go up to one location (iCloud or even better our own server). I want an app or web app that I see on the right hand side a list of artists or albums (or playlists) and columns for each device. I want to be able to tick the “matrix” to specify which devices the artist/album/playlist should be downloaded to. When the device is switched on, it must download (no fuss no bother and no stupid I-can’t-do-anything-about error message). A nice enhancement would be to specify three options for each entity (Download, Stream, Not Available). There must be options to easily bulk select.

So … is there such a thing out there?

In my immediate family plus spouses and kids girlfriends/boyfriends there are 11 Macs, three iPads and 10 iPhones. My brothers are very similar. I have nieces and nephews that use Apple. My parents also use Apple. Collectively, we have a bunch of Apple equipment.

I had some kind of similar question here.

I decided to go my own route, because basically everything from big companies is specific to their environment. And even though it required some work, I ended up with a solution I am quite happy with.

I have a Mac Server and a DynDNS service.
I have a Madsonic Instance running, which is a fork of Subsonic.

Subsonic has a lot of Apps that can be used for streaming.
Madsonic (and any other fork) is compatible to those clients.

Subsonic wants 1$ per month, if you want to use streaming (via Apps),
Madsonic (and most other forks) do not.

The Web-UI is awesome and there are also other Web-Clients like JamStash
,
that I love to use personally.

Besides the Subsonic Setup, I have a very cleaned up iTunes Library that has Home-Sharing enabled and can sync via Wifi with my iPhone. Also including my purchases.

iTunes requires a lot of attention and maintenance as I discovered recently;
and I would not recommend to let iTunes manage the Library itself.
Instead I wrote some scripts (and found some)
to make maintaining my Library a lot easier

I decided to build up a Folder Structure, that I like
and only let iTunes reference those files, but never touch them directly (except for metadata).

Subsonic does not care about the management, it simply searches for new media every day/week/month (as you wish) in a folder and updates the library.

However, all of that requires a lot of work.
If you are lazy or you simply do not care that mouch about Music, You should use another Service besides iTunes Match, as other Users also suggested (Amazon Cloud/Spotify/Ecoute/...)

From where we stand today, I am very sure, that there is no solution to a good music-streaming service that we seek.

I would say your best choice is the Ecoute for Mac!

And for your iPhone ect (IOS) there is a version for that.

A stand alone music player that will interact with existing iTunes libraries.

You can read some ratings here.


Does "Group Message" mean that all recipients would "see" each other? I was wondering if I send a message to two (or more) people using iOS5, will the message automatically be a "Group Message"?

So, does that mean that in the above picture, John would know that I've sent "msg" to Peter, and Peter would know that I've sent "msg" to John?

In my experience I always see all recipients in a group iMessage - so depending on if the author of the message chose email or phone numbers I see each recipient's information.

If I have that address/phone in my address book, then I get my address book's name for the contact, but even then, I can tap on the name and determine if an email or phone number was used to address the group.

On the iPhone, there is a group message toggle - but at iOS 5.1.1, it doesn't seem to matter whether this is on or off on the sender or the receiver - I still see everyone in the group iMessage. As far as I can tell, that switch doesn't do anything on an iPhone and isn't there to even help on an iPad / iPod touch.

No, according to this topic on the discussionboard of Apple, if you send the message to multiple people, but they will receive it as single message.

If you want to achieve a group message, I suggest you use group-sms (iMessages only!). Which will allow you to have conversations with multiple persons.


Why will my Mac only load Google and Facebook? I'm running into this really strange problem on my 2013 iMac at home (running Mavericks): the internet will work for a while, then at some point it will stop being able to load any websites except for Facebook and Google (and Google-owned sites, like Gmail and YouTube). These sites work fine, but attempting to access any other site will get stuck on "Connecting..." and eventually time out.

This applies to all browsers. It also applies whether I'm connected via ethernet or WiFi.

Attempting to ping other sites like amazon.com, bing.com, etc. via ping just shows a string of timeouts. nslookup does seem to give back IP addresses, but even plugging these directly into a browser's address bar, I still get nothing.

So I guess that means it's not a DNS issue? All the same, I've tried my ISP's default DNS, Google DNS, and OpenDNS -- no difference.

I can confirm the problem is just with my iMac. Other devices on the same network can connect to any website just fine. Furthermore, if I actually start up a Windows VM on the iMac, the VM can also connect to any website!

Rebooting the computer fixes things for a while. But eventually the problem comes back.

Does anyone know what the issue might be? I've Googled around a bit, and it does seem that some people have encountered similar issues; but I wasn't able to find any solutions that worked for me.

EDIT: Maybe this is the same issue as in this question. However, bouncing mDNSResponder as prescribed in the top answer to that question didn't solve the problem for me.

In my case the problem was IPv6. Websites like Facebook, Google.com and Youtube use IPv6 and work fine while other's don't support it yet.

I couldn't figure out the issue exactly (and the right configuration for IPv6) but I disabled IPv6 and the issue was resolved. This is all I care at this point.

The commands for El Capitan:

Turning off IPv6 support for ethernet:

networksetup -setv6off Ethernet

Disabling IPv6 for wireless:

networksetup -setv6off Wi-Fi

If you ever need to re-enable:

networksetup -setv6automatic Wi-Fi
networksetup -setv6automatic Ethernet

I will edit this if I ever find the correct setting for IPv6 instead of a full disable.

Go to setting --> network --> revert and it worked !


What app is this icon with a square and a black triangle? I've seen this icon in a tutorial I watched on YouTube. What app is this icon?
Have searched through Google Images but found nothing.

That is the icon for AirPlay, by Apple, and that menu bar item allows you to control the streaming/mirroring of content on your Mac to an Apple TV or other AirPlay server.

  Turning AirPlay Mirroring on and off

  If your Mac supports using your Apple TV as a display, an AirPlay menu appears in the menu bar when an Apple TV is on the same network. The AirPlay Mirroring menu icon turns blue when AirPlay Mirroring is on ().

Source: About AirPlay Mirroring in OS X

The little square with the triangle at the bottom is
Part of Crome Cast.


Recovering a confused partition table? So I've got a MacBook Pro which I use for work (and thus every file is precious information) and my BootCamp partition was getting a bit small, so I resized it with GParted, but not before resizing the OS X partition using diskutil.

However, after modifying the partitions, when I hold the option key at boot, I exclusively see the "Windows" partition, no Macintosh HD or Recovery HD.

I can see both of these drives from Windows, and all files are intact.

Is there anything I can do to repair this without

Requiring a backup drive (My backups are done to a NAS and thus cannot be booted)
Damaging any data on the device
Going to the Apple Store (Nearest one is a good few hours away)

Can I use the Internet Recovery system to get into a recovery environment?

Edit: I should mention I have a 64GB flash drive that I can use for anything, and the backups are exclusively of my "Documents/IdeaProjects" folder since that's the "important" work-related stuff. All of Windows and my personal files are not backed up (since the NAS is a work-owned system)

Further edit: I can no longer boot to Windows. I should mention that the value of th data on this drive is such that I am fully willing to pay a professional recovery company anything to recover it. How does that process work if I need to do it?

Alright, I fixed it. I installed a Live image to my flash drive and copied the TestDisk software to it. My live image was Windows 10 To Go, but I believe any OS could handle it.

Then, I ran a scan using TestDisk, and re-enabled the "deleted" partitions. After doing this, I wrote the new GPT to disk, and rebooted. Held the option key, and the partitions showed back up.

I essentially followed this guide, but since my partitions weren't actually in the partition table, it showed them as 'deleted' - setting them back to 'primary' and writing it fixed it.

Moral of the story - Don't mess with any partitions on a Mac from anything else than software in OS X or you may trash your partition table.


How do I run a terminal command for different values How do I have to label i such that the do command is repeated for all values of i.

E.g.

if i =2:
cd /Users/xxx/zTree; wine explorer /desktop=1,640x480 zleaf.exe /language english /name lab1
cd /Users/xxx/zTree; wine explorer /desktop=2,640x480 zleaf.exe /language english /name lab2

But somehow this does not work, where is my mistake?

display dialog "how many leafs?" default answer ""

set i to the text returned of result as integer
repeat while i > 0
  tell application "Terminal"
    do script "cd /Users/xxx/zTree; wine explorer /desktop=$i,640x480 zleaf.exe /language english /name lab$i"
    set i to i - 1
    activate
  end tell
end repeat

medbot is right that you should really do this as a shell script but since it's hard to do dialog boxes like in Applescript here's the answer:

display dialog "how many leafs?" default answer ""

set i to the text returned of result as integer
repeat while i > 0
    tell application "Terminal"
        do script "cd /Users/xxx/zTree; wine explorer /desktop=" & i & ",640x480 zleaf.exe /language english /name lab" & i
    end tell
set i to i - 1
end repeat

If you intend to automate Terminal commands, you would achieve this by writing a plain text file called a shell script. The shell script file would contain the commands you wish to execute, each separated by a line. The shell script file can also contain programmatic statements with variables and operators. When you wish to execute the shell script, you would simply issue the filename of the shell script at a command prompt as you would for a built in command.

What is not exactly clear in your question is, where do you intend the variable 'i' to get its starting value, and what should be done differently each time 'i' is incremented and evaluated?

Also, 'cd' is not a script, it is a command.


How can I get an unreadable Flash Drive to work? I got this pretty cool flash drive as a gift and I can't seem to use it. Every time I plug it in, a pop up comes up that says: The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.

I opened up Disk Utility and tried to erase it, in the hope of making it readable. It shows the loading bar and after a couple minutes, a pop-up appears and says: Disk Erase failed with the error: Unable to write to the last block of the device. So I remove it, and try again with no avail. I even tried using terminal and the diskutil eraseVolume command and I get:

newfs_hfs: write (sector 0): Invalid argument

Mounting disk

Could not mount disk2 with name (null) after erase

Error: -69832: File system formatter failed

So I tookit out, and tried again with diskutil randomDisk just to see if I couldeven write on it. and then I got this:

Started erase on disk2
Error: -69879: Couldn't open disk
Underlying error: 2: POSIX reports: No such file or directory

Does anyone have any idea how I can make this drive readable?

Can you get the disk identifier? In Disk Utility, select the drive and choose "Info" – it should read something like disk1 or disk2 or so. (But NOT disk0; that's your internal HD!)

Then open a terminal, and type in

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/diskX

(where diskX is of course the disk identifier you got earlier.)

Type in your admin password, and it should overwrite every block of the disk with 0x00 (i.e. erase it).

Then, you can format your drive.

[Please be cautious when doing this; I'm not responsible for anything if anything goes wrong ;-)]

need to reinstall the firmware of the drive using a windows computer


What could I use to read epub books on OS X? I would prefer a good and free solution for reading epub books on OS X.

It looks that by default OS X is not able to open epub books.

Calibre

ePubRead Firefox Addon

Crossplatform Sony book reader

Mac OS X Port of FBReader

Adobe Digital Editions

Amazon Kindle for Mac works quite well.  You can download it directly from Amazon, or get it via the Mac App Store.


My iPhone was stolen and now doesn't appear in iCloud? My iPhone was just stolen and when I open iCloud it no longer lists ANY of my phones, even old ones that I still have but my kids use as iPods.  What is going on?

You haven't mentioned it, but even if you had your location services disabled and your iPhone was untrackable with "Find my iPhone," you should inform Apple that your phone was stolen. If you bought your iPhone new, then Apple will have record of that iPhone's serial number (and probably MAC address) associated with your name. If the serial number shows up in their systems, either by the thief seeking support from Apple, or by the theif's creation of an AppleID and attempting to reassociate that iPhone to their name, Apple can flag the activity as suspicious, remotely wipe the phone, or more likely, simply disable it. I highly recommend calling Apple support and reporting that your iPhone was stolen.

If you didn't have them set up under the same Apple ID, or with Find My iPhone/Device, they won't show.


How to pass keyboard hotkeys from VMWare Windows VM back to OSX host? I'm running VMWare 5 on a MacBook Pro, and I'd like to be able to send certain combinations of keys out to OSX while working in my Windows VM.  I've set up a couple Automator scripts that do Play/Pause/Next on my Google Music tab in Chrome when I hit Ctrl-Cmd-Z, Ctrl-Cmd-X, and so on.  They work great while I'm using any other OSX app, but VMWare traps the keys and routes them to Windows, so that they no longer function as global hotkeys.

Is there a way to fix this?  I see options to map certain keys on the Mac keyboard to others in Windows, but no way to do the reverse.

That's easy.

Disable the Auto Capture Keyboard.


New uninitialised SSD not showing in Disk Utility I have bought a new Samsung EVO 850 SSD, it is yet unformatted. I have a SATAI/II to USB3.0 dock which I want to use to get the drive formatted, but it is just not showing up in Disk Utility (Recovery mode or plain) or even Disk Management on Windows. I have a Macbook Pro 17" Early-2011 [El Capitan 10.11.5] and want to clone my current HDD to this SSD using Carbon Copy Cloner.

The dock I am using is this exact one: https://www.amazon.com/Vantec-3-5-Inch-Drive-Black-NST-D300S3-BK/dp/B007B5PQW4

The SSD is this one: http://www.samsung.com/za/consumer/memory-storage/memory-storage/ssd/MZ-75E250BW

I have read of a few people successfully installing this drive into their Macbook Pro, but success eludes me.

Is the drive maybe broken? Or is the dock preventing the drive from showing up? Or am I doing something wrong.

Old thread, but just run to similar problem myself. My old HDD broke up, and had no chance to format my new SSD anywhere.

New disk was not listed on Disk Utility, when booted the machine with USB-installer and so that I was not able to format the disk and I was not getting nowhere.

I noticed that I was able to run Terminal during installer (Top ribbon)

I checked all devices with command-line Disk Utility:

diskutil list

And the new Disk was listed there.

Then format using diskutil:

diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ NewDisk /dev/<disk id>

The new disk was formatted and reboot. Disk was now listed on Disk Utility and I was able to install the macOS without issues.

The first thing to do with any SSD problems, is check that the drive has the latest firmware. I had an Intel SSD that was simply not seen on a Mac, but worked fine in a PC. I upgraded the drive's firmware, and now the Mac can see the drive, and even boot from it.

Find the latest firmware for the drive, and try applying it.

NOTE: updating the firmware on an SSD usually wipes all the data on it! I know you said that it is currently uninitialised and unused, but please be aware of this before attempting a firmware update.


How can I reassign the copy/paste keyboard shortcuts? I've been using mac for years, but prefer to do software development on windows. I'm really used to is using the folowing shortcuts on windows very much:

<CTRL>  + INSERT: Copy
<SHIFT> + INSERT: Paste
<SHIFT> + DELETE: Cut

Of late, I've taken to doing even my development work on the Mac. However, as a matter of habit, I'm missing these shortcuts very much. Actually, I find these a lot more convenient than COMMAND + (C/V/X) combo.

Is there a way to reassign these three shortcuts at least?

I've look all over the internet and in the "Keyboards" system preferences but I did not find anything.

PS: If you're wondering where I find the INSERT keys on a mac book pro, I use a wireless keyboard.

This worked great for me to serve just the cut/paste/copy features I use so often

I can't make Karabiner Elements work for me for Sierra, no Insert key.  I finally decided the issue is that I use my left hand to press modifier keys (ctrl, cmd, opt) and my right hand to press navigation keys (arrows, home, end, insert, delete).  THAT'S WHY Cmd-C and Cmd-V are so awkward.

So I am experimenting with (through the System Keyboard Shortcuts above):

Cmd-[ for Copy
Cmd-[ for Paste


Can't set different Java version in Mojave with jenv I want to have different Java versions on my machine.
I installed jenv for that reason. However, I can't set the desired Java version to it. Actually couldn't set any version.

I have Java 8 and 11 installed. I want to set Java 8 as a global.`

Here is snippet what I have tried:

sdos-MacBook-Pro:~ nazar$ ls -la /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  4 root   wheel  128 Nov 28 16:58 .
drwxr-xr-x  5 root   wheel  160 Nov 19 19:41 ..
drwxr-xr-x  3 root   wheel   96 Nov 19 12:04 jdk1.8.0_192.jdk
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 nazar  staff   96 Oct  6 15:25 openjdk-11.0.1.jdk
sdos-MacBook-Pro:~ nazar$ jenv versions
* system (set by /Users/nazar/.jenv/version)
sdos-MacBook-Pro:~ nazar$ jenv add /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_192.jdk/Contents/Home/
ln: /Users/nazar/.jenv/versions/oracle64-1.8.0.192: No such file or directory
sdos-MacBook-Pro:~ nazar$ ls -lg /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_192.jdk/Contents/Home/
total 52224
-r--r--r--   1 wheel      3244 Oct  6 19:57 COPYRIGHT
-r--r--r--   1 wheel        40 Oct  6 19:57 LICENSE
-r--r--r--   1 wheel       159 Oct  6 19:57 README.html
-rw-r--r--   1 wheel    108062 Sep 12 12:20 THIRDPARTYLICENSEREADME-JAVAFX.txt
-r--r--r--   1 wheel    155003 Oct  6 19:57 THIRDPARTYLICENSEREADME.txt
drwxr-xr-x  46 wheel      1472 Oct  6 20:01 bin
drwxr-xr-x   3 wheel        96 Nov 19 12:04 bundle
drwxr-xr-x   9 wheel       288 Oct  6 19:57 include
-rw-r--r--   1 wheel   5207430 Sep 12 12:20 javafx-src.zip
drwxr-xr-x  10 wheel       320 Oct  6 19:58 jre
drwxr-xr-x  14 wheel       448 Oct  6 19:58 lib
drwxr-xr-x   5 wheel       160 Oct  6 19:57 man
-rw-r--r--   1 wheel       427 Oct  6 19:57 release
-rw-r--r--   1 wheel  21242800 Oct  6 19:57 src.zip
sdos-MacBook-Pro:~ nazar$ java -version
openjdk version "11.0.1" 2018-10-16
OpenJDK Runtime Environment 18.9 (build 11.0.1+13)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM 18.9 (build 11.0.1+13, mixed mode)

I can't understand what is missed there.
How to set Java 8 with jenv?

I executed in terminal:

echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.jenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'eval "$(jenv init -)"' >> ~/.bash_profile

And after it could configure jenv as it is described on the manual page. However, it didn't take effect:

sdos-MacBook-Pro:~ nazar$ jenv versions
  system
  1.8
* 1.8.0.192 (set by /Users/nazar/.jenv/version)
  11.0
  11.0.1
  openjdk64-11.0.1
  oracle64-1.8.0.192
sdos-MacBook-Pro:~ nazar$ java -version
openjdk version "11.0.1" 2018-10-16

Only after opening new terminal I could see:

sdos-MacBook-Pro:~ nazar$ java -version
java version "1.8.0_192"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_192-b12)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.192-b12, mixed mode)

For Catalina, mine got fixed by adding eval "$(jenv init -)" to ~/.zshrc file.


Running 10.13.4 Beta (17E182a), what is "Messages in iCloud currently disabled" message I am getting? See picture below.
I am seeing "Messages in iCloud is currently disabled. Repair Account."
The "repair account" is not clickable. I have enabled Messages in iCloud and I have tried to sync several times but nothing happens. I am not sure what other steps to take. Any ideas?

Go to your settings and confirm your iCloud password, this worked for me, I had the same problem.Hope this works if you haven’t already figured it out!


How to optimise my script, a script for opening new a new emacs instance only if no instance is present I use emacs and I have written a script which is half in bash and half in AppleScript in order to do the following (first I write the code and then the pseudocode). We assume that a emacs daemon is running.

pseudocode:

if (no emacs GUI process is active or a process is active but no window is present)
then
    open a new emacs window using emacsclient
    and
    put that window in foreground
else
    open the app Emacs.app (so no new instance is created and we simply put
                            the focus on the existing emacs window)

code for "switchToEmacs.sh"

#!/bin/bash
openedWindows=$(/usr/bin/osascript ~/emacsWindowsCount.scpt)
if [ $openedWindows -eq 0 ]; then
    /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/emacsclient -n -c -e  "(select-frame-set-input-focus (selected-frame))"
else
    open -a Emacs
fi

code for "emacsWindowsCount.scpt" (used in the previous script, I have compiled the code with osacompile for performance)

tell application "System Events"
    if exists (process "Emacs") then
    else
        return 0
    end if
    tell application "Emacs"
        set numberOfWindows to (count windows)
    end tell
    return numberOfWindows
end tell

I have mapped switchToEmacs.sh to a shortcut using Alfred 3 and it does what I expect it to do, but it is slow! Not extremely slow but the switch is not immediate and I have to wait about 0.3 seconds. Conversely if I have an emacs window opened and type "emacs" in the spotlight, then the transition is immediate, so I would like to remove that unnecessary waiting.

Since I hate that waiting time (it seems very short but when you need to navigate a lot trough applications it becomes awkward) for now I am doing the following:
I have removed the emacs deamon, every time I log in I start emacs.app, when I need to close the emacs app I don't use CMD+Q but CMD+H, when I need to recall emacs I simply launch emacs.app (trough an Alfred 3 shortcut) so I get emacs focus.
With this workaround the transition to emacs is immediate, but I would prefer my script for two reasons: first, with the script so I can use emacs from terminal before having launched an emacs instance opening emacs.app, but the real reason is that using this method if I type "emacsclient -t myFile" in terminal and then I close the buffer returning to the terminal, then the emacs windows (the emacs.app) will get the focus, even if I have not given it to it. This is really awkward.

IMPORTANT EDIT:
I noticed that opening a new instance is immediate, what takes time is open -a Emacs. I have tried to replace it with tell application "Emacs" to activate window 1 (compiled) but it is still slow. Any ideas?

EDIT:
I have achieved perfect performance using this free tool https://sabi.net/nriley/software/#appswitch
Now there is still a little delay but it is due to the rest of the code.

I usually just run

emacsclient -a emacs FILE

or

emacsclient -a SHELL-SCRIPT-WHICH-STARTS-EMACS-WITH-PARAMETERS FILE

and let emacsclient figure out the rest.

Is it the osa script that's taking the time?

I use a similar approach to you, but do all the processing in bash. Here's the bash function I use (in Linux, I'm not near my Mac to verify portability at the moment):

ec ()
{
    running=$(pgrep -u $USER -c emacs)
    if [ $running -eq 0 ]; then
        emacs --geometry 85 --fullheight $* &
        return 0
    fi
    emacsclient --no-wait $*
    return 0
}


What will I lose if I let iTunes Match expire, and instead subscribe to Apple Music? EDIT:  I just discovered that an Apple Music Family Plan actually requires OSX Yosemite and iOS8, which is a non-starter since we will not be upgrading past Mavericks (Yosemite caused me massive problems and I had to remove it and downgrade immediately) and my partner despises iOS later than iOS 6 and won't use it.  So I guess this means I'm stuck with only an individual plan regardless.

EDIT 01.31.2016:  Turns out that there is a VERY significant, but somewhat subtle, reality in dropping iTunes Match and using Apple Music instead.  ALL music you add in the future, will become DRM-encoded if you ever download it from the iTunes Music Library, including your own non-DRM CD rips!  Looks like the only actual "solution" is to have both iTunes Match and Apple Music.  =(

I've been an iTunes Match subscriber for a couple of years, and I have my ~15,000 songs all uploaded and also local on my Mac.  I don't really use it for mobile devices much at all, and primarily got it so that I could update my library (much of which was ripped from CDs long ago at 96kb to 128kb) to 256kb versions.

Now I've been playing with Apple Music during the initial free trial period and I have to admit, I like it a lot.  I've been discovering music like crazy including many albums by artists I like a lot, that I had no idea were even still releasing albums (OMD anyone??  WOW!)

But now, iTunes Match wants to renew again in a few days, and I'm really unclear on if I need it or not.  Info online seems to be incomplete and conjectural, since Apple Music is still so new.

What exactly will I lose if I let iTunes Match expire, given that I already have all of my library downloaded locally?

I understand (correct me if I'm wrong please) that with Apple Music, all matched music that is downloaded will have DRM.  I can live with this.  I also believe that any music that is not matched and instead is uploaded by Apple Music to my iCloud Library, will stay in the original format i.e. DRM-free.  This is good because some of my library is music I composed myself or by other musicians that I know or work with, and I wouldn't want that stuff to suddenly be locked down.

Given this, is there actually any reason I'll regret letting iTunes Match lapse and instead signing up for an Apple Music subscription?  I know the cost is significantly higher, but I'm so enjoying the music discovery process in iTunes that I'm actually thinking it's worth $15 for a family plan for myself and my partner.

Your understanding of the DRM is correct.

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

I heard recently that iTunes and Apple music is banned in other countries and is labeled as piracy. I think it's because they don't pay royalties when they sell you a song.


How to control your iPad with your Mac remotely? I would like to know, is there a way to control your iPad with your Mac remotely (be able to see and manipulate iPad's desktop on your Mac)? I know that with the TeamViewer or other programs you can control your Mac with your iPad but not vice versa.

It is not possible to remotely control the screen of an iPad unless you jailbreak and install a VNC server as MattDMo suggested. This is because the security model in iOS does not allow an app to reach outside of its sandbox to control other apps or the springboard home screen. Apple does not provide any remote control functionality at the iOS level either. There is no way to do what you are asking for without jailbreaking.

Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions do not allow remote control of the screen on iOS either. MDM can push configuration profiles to control settings on an iPad, or prompt the user to install an app from the app store, but they can't control the screen. Airwatch offers a screen control option, but this only works on platforms that support it (not iOS). I work with several MDM vendors, including Airwatch, and this is not possible because Apple does not make this functionality available in iOS.

You can try Reflector to mirror iOS devices on Mac.

According to this tutorial, you can use their 7-day free trial to wirelessly mirror (but not control) it, assuming the devices are on the same WiFi network.


Portable encrypted USB stick I would like to have an encrypted USB stick that I can use with Windows and OS X.

I could format it as FAT32 and then have a encrypted image files (more than one due to the file size limitation of 4GB) that I could mount on both, and have the software to do it on the stick itself.

Any suggestion on the best format?

Buy a USB flash drive that uses hardware encryption, where the unlock mechanism doesn't depend a software client, then format it however you prefer. An example of this would be a USB flash drive with a a biometric sensor which can scan a finger, or a built-in keypad where you can enter a PIN to unlock the drive. Several vendors sell hardware encrypted flash drives like these, including Apricorn and Imation.

Rich Trouton is right. A hardware encrypted USB device would solve the problem. Otherwise you can use use a third party cross platform encryption tool like EasyLock. It works on Windows and OS X, but I couldn't make it work on Linux.


Mac os Sierra 10.13.1 : Unable to create an account I can't create an account on mac os sierra, when I add all informations (account name, password,...), all seems to go fine, then instead of creating an account I find that a "Group" is created!

When I try to delete this group I can't

Please, Help!

I found a solution finally, the problem was that my current user has no password set. After setting a password, everything is working!


How to prevent iPhone from dropping wifi connection when it goes to sleep? I am using whatsapp web version and the iPhone needs to be connected at all times for it to work. However, when the iPhone goes to sleep (screen goes off) the wifi connected is automatically turned off to save battery and the whatsapp on my browser disconnects. Is there a way to force iPhone to keep wifi connection up when locked and/or asleep?

I have the same iPhone and the same problem. I just went into Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings. Then reconnect to your wifi like normal.

This worked for me, however if the problem is still there, maybe turn your data off when using wifi. Hope one method works for you (:

Change wifi setting password from WPA 2 to WPA. Hope that works.


Is there an iOS alternative to HTC's Zoe? I'm considering a switch back to iPhone and iOS from my Android powered HTC One (M7) phone. HTC created a super cool app called Zoe. I'm wondering if there is an equally good alternative to Zoe on iOS.

If you don't know what Zoe is, it takes your media (photos, videos) and creates really nice, themed video clips. Themes influence things like background music, video transition effects, various graphics effects (old film, zoom, etc.)

See this video for example of a Zoe:

London pt. 1

Update from 6/16/2016

At the WWDC 16 Keynote Apple presented a new Photos feature called Memories. This is basically exactly what Zoe does on HTC.

You want to take a look at Quik. This app was called replay, doing exactly what you are looking for. They got acquired by GoPro, and the name changed to Quik.

Unfortunately there is no such official application, but you might find similar in App Store.


How does the Mac choose which connection to use when both Wifi and Ethernet are connected? When I'm connected to two networks with separate routers using Wifi and Ethernet, how does my Mac know what connection to use when I visit a website?

From the Apple Support database article regarding network connection priority:

  If you connect to the Internet or a network in several different ways
  (using Wi-Fi or Ethernet, for example), you can change the order of
  the network port configurations your computer tries when connecting to
  the Internet or network.

  If there are multiple active network port configurations when you try
  to connect, OS X tries the one at the top of the list first, and then
  tries the other port configurations in descending order.

In that support article it is also described how you can change the priority order of network connections in System Preferences.

While this is true for some applications, what I experienced when I had connected my iMac to two ISP's - one wifi and another through LAN - applications like uTorrent and Games could apparently use both networks simultaneously. I got more download speed than individual connections and in case of multiplayer games, I could connect to servers with less lag and latency.


What is the best dropbox compatible iPad app for MS office documents? It's pretty simple. I just got an iPad and want to get the best app to edit word documents that I have saved in my dropbox. There are many options: pages, quick office, docs to go, office2.

I am looking to be able to browse documents within DropBox and tap edit to open them in the editor. I'll make a few changes and expect to be able to tap save and have it automatically update DropBox.

I'm a professional writer, I've tried out a bunch of these apps, and I prefer Dataviz’s Documents to Go Premium, which creates and edits Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). The great thing about the Premium version (and justifies the extra $6 over the basic version) is that it connects with the Dropbox online storage service. Documents to Go does a good job of editing Word documents, including maintaining styles, etc.

Quickoffice is a great app, but it no longer supports Dropbox.


Why do the Image Capture Extension and softwareupdated processes consume so much memory? I recently updated my 2008 MB Pro (2 GB RAM) to Yosemite from 10.6 and I've found that it's often unusably slow. After keeping an eye on Activity Monitor over a couple weeks, I notice that the Image Capture Extension and software updated processes are often using over 400MB of RAM, 95% of which is compressed.

Quitting the processes seems to make the system more responsive, but I assume that these are supposed to be running in the background.

The only applications I usually have running are Safari/Chrome, Textmate and LibreOffice. I've been closing app's from the bar when I'm not using them.

Are there any settings I can tweak to change this behaviour?
Could it be a bug? (I've noticed similar complaints elsewhere online)

Notes:

I have a relatively large iPhoto library, but I don't leave the program running
No peripherals (usb keys, cameras, storage, etc) are physically connected

Update:

I did a firmware restart several weeks ago and the Image Capture Extension has been behaving so far. softwareupdated continues to have high memory demand, the process regularly ends up with 400+MB of compressed memory. I suspect that at least some of my problems are related to (un)gzip constantly running.

Since I upgrade my late 2009 iMac (4GB memory) to Yosemite, the system had not been performing well. It would be slow at time particularly after it had not been rebooted for a a day or more. In the Activity Monitor I noticed the it Image Capture Extension was steadily growing to become a major user of memory, and the memory pressure was in the yellow as the extension used more memory. I could not determine what program or process was causing this. I then installed two 4GB memory boards increasing my memory to 12GB. Now the Image Capture extension stays at a low value (25-50MB) and does not grow, and the memory pressure stays in the green. Memory is now cheap, your 2GB is likely your problem.

I have a similar problem.  iMac mid 2011 with 12Gb Ram, Yosemite.
Image Capture Extension taking up 6.04Gb of my memory.
I do use my computer for days without restarting.  iPhoto, Preview, iMovie and Final Cut.
I have to restart every now and then.
Doesn't seem like Yosemite clear memory when you close apps.


Creating a Windows 8 bootable usb on Mac 10.6.8 without BootCamp? I'm running 10.6.8 and when I try to use BootCamp, it tells me I need "at least 10GB of free space", which is interesting since I have 21GB of free space. However, trying to fix this issue has seemed pointless at this rate and I remember there used to be way to create bootable USBs using only Disk Utility during the Vista era. I had tried converting my .iso to .dmg and mounting them and 'burning' them to the flash drive, but nothing has seemed to work. All the tutorials I have found online use BootCamp, which is what I want to stay away from since it does not work for me.

So is there a way to do this? And what is the recommended file type .iso, .img, or .dmg to be used? Should it be mounted or unmounted when I try to 'burn' it?

None of the answers got it right.
This is how you do it — without BootCamp:

Get/download a Windows ISO image file.
Your USB flash drive should have at least 8GB.
Plug it in and format/erase it using Disk Utility (under Applications/Utilities)

CAUTION: Make sure you select the correct drive! Then click erase.
Select MS-DOS (FAT) for the Format.
(If your drive is above 32GB, you might need to select ExFAT instead.)
Select Master Boot Record for the Scheme.
(This is the one used for Windows partitions.)
Click erase.

Open Terminal and run command: diskutil list
From the output, find out the name of the USB drive. It should be something like /dev/diskX. X is the number of the drive. For me, it's /dev/disk2. It might be different on your Mac.
Then type command: diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
It should print something like this: Unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful.
Then type:
sudo dd if=/path/to/win-iso-file of=/dev/disk2 bs=1m
(This will ask for your Mac password. Enter it and hit return.)

/path/to/win-iso-file is the full path of the ISO image. Just drag/drop it on terminal after if= and it will print the full path.

The process will start but there will be no output for a while. It might take 10 to 45 minutes. Be patient! (You can press Ctrl+T to see the bytes transferred so far.)
Once it's complete, it will output records in/out and bytes transferred.
Type: diskutil eject /dev/disk2
Now, re-plug the USB drive and check its contents. It should have files and folders but especially a setup.exe and an autorun.inf file.

Done.

In order to create usb bootable for win 8.1/10 without any additional software please try this method
https://laptoptechgeek.blogspot.com/2018/11/how-to-create-bootable-usb-for-windows.html


After uninstalling iBooks, I can't sign in to iTunes any more I am currently using El Capitan.

Every time I uninstalled iBooks so I could manage my books with iTunes, I found I simply couldn't sign in to iTunes any more. That means I click the 'sign in' button but no sign-in window pops up. I can't purchase or re-download any of my music or books.

And reinstalling iBooks fixes it all.

Is there a way I can manage my books with iTunes and can still sign into my account?

Uninstall iTunes 12.3.x
then install iTunes 12.2.x.

Seems as if 12.3 must have iBooks not so with 12.2.2.


Is it impossible to delete/move a file named "␀" on mac? When I try to move, rename, or delete a file named ␀in Finder, I get this error message:

  The operation can't be completed, because an unexpected error occured (error code -50).

With mv, rm or find -delete in Terminal

 rm: /Library/␀: Invalid argument
 mv: rename /Library/␀ to /tmp/␀: Invalid argument
 find: -delete: unlink(/Library/␀): Invalid argument

Can I move or delete this file in Mac OS X or do I have to use another operating system?

I even tried creating a file with this name in /tmp and it has not gone away since 8 reboots.

You can attempt to remove the file by its inode number. List the files in /Library
with the -i option

ls -il /Library

The first column is the inode number of the file. Then use find

find /Library -inum XXXXXXX -delete

where XXXXXX is the inode number of the file.

mkdir tmp; mv * tmp; cd tmp; mv [A-Z]* [a-z]* [1-3]* ..; rm *; cd ..; rmdir tmp


Reduce the minimum iPhone volume (bluetooth speakers) When connecting my iPhone (4S or 6) to a JBL Flip 2 bluetooth speakers, the minimum volume is too loud. Under that, it mutes. It is not a problem of the speakers, as the volume using another, non-Apple, phone, can be reduced much more.

Is there a way to get finer decrements of the volume than those of the side buttons? Moving the slider suggests so, but it is difficult to control in such small space.

I tried using a volume cap as suggested elsewehere, but there seems to have no effect on the volume precision.

Any ideas?

I was just here searching for a way to do exactly this (reduce the "Step" for volume adjustments).  I gave up and went to solve a couple more music/iPhone related problems.
Anyway, turns out that if you have the Apple Watch and use it's built-in volume control, there are no stops--even when playing through bluetooth it let me adjust all the way from really loud down to whisper.
Another thing to notice--after I adjust my phone volume with the watch I think it somehow affects the built-in controls and I'm able to get a different range but I can't put my finger on exactly what's going on--and after I leave it sit for a while it goes back to it's old behavior.

Slide up the Control Center. There you'll have a slider to control volume which allows stepless adjusting.


How can I lock Mail/Contact/Calendars in an iPad? All members of my family use the iPad primarily for browsing the Web or playing games.  It is basically a living room computer. But I use it also for my e-mail.

I know The iPad can be locked with a passcode as a whole (which I don't really need, because anyone who makes it to my living room is welcome to use it), but I would like to lock only the Mail app.  Is there any way to do that?

Without jailbreaking, I believe your options are the use of apps that provide this kind of lock functionality built-in, unless Apple decide to implement some kind of multiple user support in future iOS versions for devices like the iPad.

I've previously come across Secure Gmail or Secure Webmail (there may well be others) which provide passcode protection schemes when starting and, judging by the screenshots, appear to be frontends to the relevant webmail pages (as opposed to a native application like the Apple Mail app). I've not used either, but they may be of use to you.

One of the best password/passcode protected e-mail apps is CloudMagic.  It works on non-jailbroken iOS devices, has received great reviews and I have used it for years.   :)


Turn on Proxy Without Password Prompt I am looking for a way to do the equivalent without prompting for password. I need it to be a native way that does not require the user to change any configuration files (including sudoers). And GUI doesn't count (making AppleScript open System Preferences and click the buttons).

do shell script "networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxy wi-fi 127.0.0.1 5464 off"
do shell script "networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxystate wi-fi on"

Maybe something with keychain?
Configuration profile?

Note:  If they have to type in a admin one time to set something up thats ok (like giving the application access to keychain), but it must be simple enough the average user can do it.

Simplicity is the most important.

Attempted Solutions

https://stackoverflow.com/a/20110726/7886229

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/236809/263848

Actually found solution that seems to work...

Copy the file to your applications Resources folder

cp /usr/sbin/networksetup /path/to/app/Contents/Resources

Change permissions from this post

do shell script "chmod u+s /path/to/app/Contents/Resources/networksetup" with administrator privileges

The user will have to type in their password once, but after that they will not have to.

Any other solutions where you don't have to type in password would be better!


How to load images from PC to iOS 8 iPhone camera roll? I have 100 pictures on my PC that I want to load into my Camera Roll. The PC is running Vista so I can't install iCloud onto it.

On iCloud.com, I only see Notes, Contacts, etc, but not Photos.

Please help. Thanks.

I recommend trying Dropbox or Cubby. I know Dropbox allows roughly 3GB (I think) for free and depending on the size of your photographs that may be enough.

All you do is login online and upload the photos to Dropbox (note that Cubby is comparable in nearly all aspects) and then install the app on your phone. You can then save the images to your camera roll.

Note that if you use Backblaze (if you don't now perhaps you should anyway), you can simply download the images from your app on your phone.

Get app called Documents, it’s free.
Once you have it go to Wifi Transfer and follow instructions.
It is easy to use.


iPad Wi-Fi stopped working I have suddenly lost the Wi-Fi on my iPad. Me and my friend have a Wi-Fi account with AT&T and his iPad Wi-Fi is working just fine. Why not mine?

You will need to restore your iPad.  Hold down the top and bottom buttons till the screen goes black and you see the Apple symbol.  Then follow the instructions on this page http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1808  to restore your iOS.   I think once you do this and re-sync your ipad a lot of your problems (that you have posted about on here today) will be resolved.

Restoring is far too drastic for this issue until all other avenues are reasonably explored. if resetting network settings (under settings) or a simple reset doesn't fix it (power off by holding sown sleep button and holding it again to turn back on), looking into wifi network issues would be the next step. Restoring is not guaranteed to work, and YOU WILL LOSE/WIPE EVERYTHING.


iPhone storage doesn't add up? When I look at the storage section of my phone, the various categories add up to about 2.5 GB of storage, but it says that 11.4 GB is being used. Is there any way to figure out what else is taking up space on my phone?

Please check out What is other on iPhone Storage to get a nice way in finding your hidden storage waste.

Also to give you a nice way to fix this. Restore your iPhone to the most recent version and then place the backup file back. Don't just update as it won't remove anything.

Also check out this Apple KB about the space issue.

To summarize Apple's solution:

  Turn off the music or photo sync option in iTunes for the device.
  Click Apply to sync the changes to the device.
  Turn the music and photo sync options for the device on again.
  Click Apply again to try to sync the device to iTunes.
  If the 'Not enough free space' alert appears, continue to step 5.
  Turn off the automatic syncing functions for the iOS device. To do this:

  Select the iOS device from the iTunes window and click the Summary tab.
  Deselect "Automatically sync when this device is connected" and select the "Sync only checked songs and videos" checkbox.
  Click Apply to sync the changes to the device.
  Reduce the amount of data that is being synced to the device and resync the device. For example, if syncing your Music library exceeds
  the memory capacity of the device, choose "Selected playlists" to
  transfer rather than "All songs and playlists" under the Music tab in
  iTunes. If the 'Not enough free space' alert appears, continue to step
  6.

  Restore using iTunes.

I deleted telegram becaus it was using 2gb of storage and defaults to keep videos chats and a ton of mideast chats non english it appears to be a mess.


IOS 5.1.1 Safemode problem I jailbroke my old iPod Touch 3rd Generation, with IOS 5.1.1, using the latest version of absynthe. It worked for several months, but then it randomly stopped. It went into safe mode, but the touch screen wouldn't work. It showed the lockscreen, but nothing worked at all, except for the physical buttons. The only way to reboot is to follow the same steps as DFU mode (Hold power button 3 sec, then home button AND power for 10, then just home for 8)... However, it always boots right back into Safe mode.

I had to restore, and once rejailbroken, it worked fine, until I installed SBsettings. Then it did the EXACT same thing, and I had to restore and re-jailbreak AGAIN! The other day, I finished installing ALL of my extensive list of tweaks, and got it to about where I wanted it, when lo and behold, it booted to safe mode again. I have spent so much time on this, and I do not want to do it again. Does anybody here have any knowledge on the topic? Is there a program I can run from my computer to manually control the device or kick it out of safe mode? Is there some other method of doing this? I am looking for any solution OTHER than restoring. I have done that several times.

Also, I know the problem isn't with my jailbreak. It worked for several months before, then one day stopped. Now, it has the problem within a day of rejailbreaking, OR instantly if I install SBsettings. I re-installed the jailbreak, and applied the new one as well, and that didn't work. I have given up, and don't want to go through the painful process of restoring, rejailbreaking, and re-installing all of those tweaks again.

Also, because I can't get into my iPod, I can't provide a list of tweaks. I would if I could, but it just can't happen unless I can get in there.

SafeMode v0.9.5000 is not working well on iOS 5.11
You should downgrade to v0.9.4000
See http://www.jailbreakqa.com/questions/304545/screen-is-unresponsive-to-touch-in-substrate-safemode-ios-421

Reboot and after Apple logo appears hold volume up until it turns on


Parallels Desktop 9 - Failed to open the Parallels networking module. After OS X El Capitan Install So I recently updated my OS X to El Capitan and after it had been installed, I booted Parallels Desktop 9 to find that it would no longer connect to the internet.

On boot up, it says:

  Failed to open the Parallels networking module.

and then suggests:

  Your virtual machine will continue to work normally, but the networking will be disabled. You can fix the problem by restoring the default network settings. To this effect, go to Parallels Desktop > Preferences > Network and click Restore Defaults.

However, when I go to Restore Defaults, it says that it has failed and that it was not reverted to the default settings. I have searched up on the Parallels support forums and it suggests to Repair Disk Permissions but I have tried that and nothing has happened! Please help!

Unfortunately Parallels Desktop 9 doesn't officially support El Capitan. I've received two Service Notification emails from Parallels which state:

  If you intend to upgrade to Mac OS X El Capitan (10.11), please note that Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac will NOT support OS X El Capitan (10.11).

  Before you upgrade to OS X El Capitan, be sure to upgrade to Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac. It is our latest version, fully optimized and enhanced for OS X El Capitan.

(From past experience, I usually have to upgrade Parallels Desktop every second OS X release. I'm currently on Parallels 9, am thinking of upgrading to El Capitan and came across this question when trying to research if I really do need to pay to upgrade Parallels. Unfortunately it appears I do...)

This problem with Parallels networking module after upgrade seems to be repeated from version to version. Looks like that this is just a way to encourage existing clients to buy a new version of Parallels. Switching to VirtualBox must be real solution.


How do I force iPhoto to download new photos in my Photo Stream? I'm listing some items for sale online, and have taken a bunch of pictures with my iPhone.  About half-way through the process, iPhoto '11 stopped downloading new photos into its local Photo Stream.  I've quit iPhoto and re-opened it.  I've gone into the Photos app on my iPhone and confirmed all the pictures are there.

Is this normal behavior? Is there any way to tell iPhoto to download my pictures?

I have found a better way. One that doesn't involve resync'ing the entire stream.

Quit iPhoto
Open up Activity Monitor
In the search field enter: photostreamagent
Select all the PhotoStreamAgent processes listed
Click the Quit Process button
In the confirmation dialog that pops up click the Quit button
Confirm that all the PhotoStreamAgent processes are no longer alive by waiting for the Activity Monitor window to show no processes with that name
Re-start iPhoto

When you restart iPhoto it will re-start the PhotoStreamAgent process for your iPhoto session and kick off a new Photo Stream sync. You'll get your lastest pictures updated and you won't have to sit through a full re-sync of all your Photo Stream.

Update for Yosemite where the process name has changed to iCloud Photos. This is the what you want to kill:

Update for Yosemite 10.10.4 where the process name has changed to Photos Agent. This what you want to kill:

You can also do this, quickly, from the command line like so:

sudo pkill cloudphotosd
sudo killall cloudphotosd

It depends on whether the photos have made it to iCloud or not. If not see my answer at https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/103856/33389 ... if so the existing answers are adequate.


How can I connect my iPhone 6s Plus to my stereo? I understand that Apple's iPhone Lightning Dock has a headphone socket that I can use:

  Connect the dock to powered speakers or a stereo using a 3.5mm cable (sold separately) to play music and podcasts from your iPhone

I actually have a similar (3rd-party) dock that I used with an iPhone 4s. However, (a) that obviously has an old-style 20-pin connector, and (b) the sound quality was poor.

Clearly Apple's new dock would have the right connector, and hopefully the sound quality would be better, but I worry about the negative reviews of that dock, which imply that the stress on the connector can cause the phone's lightning socket to deteriorate and eventually fail.

I don't care about having a "stand" for the phone, and I don't really care that much about charging... is there a cable-based solution I could use? (In other words, something where I just plug in a cable rather than putting the phone in a wobbly stand).

Or, is a wireless more appropriate? I see that there are Bluetooth receivers out there that seem to be designed to do this, but again there are a lot of negative reviews, mostly about the reliability of the Bluetooth connection. The only device I found that got a lot of positive reviews was the Arcam rMini Blink, and that's quite expensive.

Don't Apple offer something in this space? (Not that it'd be less expensive!).

I've done it 4 different ways (from lowest to highest cost). Sound quality is mostly dependent on the quality of the audio file on the iPhone and the quality of the stereo. The quality degradation due to any of these 4 connection mechanisms seems relatively low - unless you're an audiophile or Neill Young. ;-)

Connect iPhone headphone output to stereo auxiliary input with an appropriate adapter cable (mini-stereo jack ==> what ever your stereo accepts e.g. RCA). Important: Run iPhone output volume only around 50% to avoid input distortion at stereo.
Get bluetooth receiving device (I've had good luck with one from Philips bad luck with some generic chinese stuff), which connects to the stereo input. Then connect with bluetooth to that device. In my experience bluetooth worked rather well when the iPhone was stationary reasonably close to the bluetooth device. Moving around with iPhone in pocket while on Bluetooth connection could cause audio dropout grief in some cases.
Use an Airport Express as wifi or wired network participant (e.g. as a wifi extender) on your regular home wifi, and connect the audio output from that to the stereo input. Then use Airplay to send the iPhone audio to the Airport Express. Moving around with iPhone in pocket seems to be more tolerant than bluetooth based connection.
Use an Apple TV as wired or wifi participant on your home network. However to the best of my knowledge the Apple TV only outputs digital audio (HDMI or optical SPDIF on 2nd or 3rd gen Apple TV), so either the stereo has to have inputs for HDMI or optical SPDIF or one needs an additional converter box.  And then use Airplay to send the iPhone audio to the Apple TV. Moving around with iPhone in pocket is equally tolerant as with Airport Express, since both use iPhone wifi.

Apple's dock is their only entry in the iPhone to Stereo hardware game.

You could start with whatever metal cable you like and plug that into the headphone jack and plug the lightning cable into a charger (if that is one of your requirements).

From the comments and text - the low quality is due to a bad cable or the inability of the amplifier to take the signal from line level / 50% volume and not a limitation of the iPhone in almost all cases.

You'd need to get a custom DAC for the iPhone for critical audiophile needs if you have the source material in a high quality and high-bitrate encoding. For casual use - modest cables and non-maxed out volume should let the iPhone send near digital quality sound to consumer stereos over a short metal cable.


What are the RAM requirements for OS X 10.10 Yosemite The minimum requirements for RAM for Yosemite is 2 GB as stated in apple literature.

What are the optimum real world requirements for Yosemite to achieve a noticeable improvement.

In particular for an early 2011 MBP 2.3 GHz which currently has 4 GB.

Absolute minimum is 2GB... though 4GB would be a more tenable minimum, 8GB more comfortable, 16GB would be able to breathe properly.

8GB really is the 'minimum sensible' for a modern OS, whatever the official spec says.

I don't think add more ram can do much to load the system. As Yosemite can compress physical memory efficiently, 4GB of Ram actually enough for most of the task unless you need to work with 3D or super high-res photo. Save your money to upgrade to SSD, you will feel like you are having a new machine.
I have 2 MBP at home, Machine A is an i7 with 16G ram. Machine B is a core2duo with 4G ram. Both of them are replaced with a SSD. Compare boot time, they are almost the same (within 3 to 5 sec. difference). Booting Yosemite at around 20 sec. So don't need to bother much on adding ram if you want notiable performance. Replace the harddisk to SSD you will more then satisfied on the result.


How can I disable the 2nd hard drive in my 27" iMac? I have an 2010 27" iMac with an SSD and a regular hard drive. Now that I've been using the machine for some time and have not come close to filling the SSD, I'd like to disable the spinning hard drive completely. Why? It makes a loud humming sound when it runs, and I don't use it for anything. Anything I can do short of taking apart this monster and ripping it out?

UPDATE: As of 3-Apr-2012 and OS X 10.7.3, the solution below works. Some programs occasionally spin up the drive, but it only hums for about 5 minutes then goes back to sleep.

I don't know if it'll work, but try going into the Energy Saver section of System Preferences and select "Put hard disk(s) to sleep whenever possible". Then go into Disk Utility and unmount the hard drive. With no way to access the drive, I would assume Mac OS X would put the drive to sleep.

This is a temporary solution though, and it won't persist across reboots (Mac OS X automatically mounts all available drives at boot). If you're really not using the drive and don't have any data on there that you want, my suggestion would be to go into Disk Utility, repartition the drive, and for the format select "Free Space". Once done, Mac OS X will be unable to mount the drive and should put it to sleep.

I'd also recommend you try to use my util to auto disable your second drive on booting OS with an opportunity to enable it in one command whenever after. Please check it out: https://github.com/igorleanch/2ndrive


Process "warmd" keep busy mac after upgrading to macOS 10.14.4 After upgrading my Mac mini to macOS Mojave 10.14.4, every time I restart the computer the process "warmd" keep busy CPU and hard disk for 10-15 minutes, with great "spooling" noise and slowing down all the finder. What's happened? Its a well known bug of the upgrade?

Have a read of the following;

Provisioning OSX and disabling unnecessary services

It has instructions on how to disable warmd. I can not confirm they are still relevant at this stage as I myself am installing the latest OSX as we speak. I will provide more details after that install finishes.

TL;DR

Kill warmd: sudo launchctl kill -9 system/com.apple.warmd

Disable warmd: sudo launchctl disable system/com.apple.warmd

You can use a scheduling app like Scheduler for Mac to launch an AppleScript to quit warmd upon reboot. Just look for it on the internet and read its help to know how to do it.


Restarting sound service? My macbook pro running Snow Leopard stopped making sounds a couple hours ago. I've found other reports of people with sounds working through headphones, but that's not the problem I'm seeing. I get no sound when my headphones are plugged in either.

I'm wondering if there's a LaunchAgent or LaunchDaemon to restart which would remedy this. I've already tried killing the coreaudio daemon (and it dutifully automatically restarted) but that didn't fix it.

I need to reboot for an OS update, so I think that'll probably rectify things.

Is there another way?

You can kill the CoreAudio process by opening Terminal and running sudo kill -9 `ps ax|grep 'coreaudio[a-z]' | awk '{print $1}'`. It will restart automatically after a couple seconds.

That fixes some problems my aging MBP has been having, where it sometimes fails to detect headphones or decides the speakers aren't connected. No guarantees it will work for every audio problem, but it's worth a shot.

Source: zakgreant on macosxhints forums.

In my experience, a reboot is required to fix this. It's a poor fix since it seems to recover from the failure and not address the root cause. I would like to have, but have not yet discovered if there is another quicker/simpler method to get sound back...


Some apps won't run after upgrade to iOS 7.1, how to fix? I update to the newest 7.1 yesterday.  Now some of my apps will not open.  Is there a way to delete this update?

Try shutting down all apps by double clicking the home button, then swiping all of the apps up to the top of the screen to quit them then reboot your phone by holding down the Home & Power button at the same time until it prompts you to shut down.

Go ahead and restart it again. If it still won't fully launch, you may have gotten a bum download. To delete the app, tap and hold on the icon until the 'x' appears and tap that 'x'. Go back to the app store and then reinstall the app and give it another try.

The Facebook app didn't work after this update on my iPhone 4, but after I re-installed the app it worked.

Try deleting your app and re-installing it.


bridgeOS not updating? I just updated my Mojave machine to Security Update 2020-006 but my bridgeOS has not updated, it remains on 18P50347c which I got when I tried Big Sur DP4/PB1 on 7 August 2020?
I don't have any other Macs so "downgrading (from beta to release) bridgeOS using Apple Configurator 2" isn't an option.
How can I get the latest bridgeOS on my Mojave Mac mini?

Due to the fact that you have previously installed a beta release, it looks like the bridgeOS update is skipped. Try to install the latest macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 (20B29) release on a external drive.

I have had decent success downloading the full installer. Usually that works without going to recovery but sometimes that is easier for people. But I only go to newer bridge, not regress so you might need someone to hack together a regression step if the full installer doesn’t get your the briegeOS you seek.
Your process is the same to retry an install if Big Sur (or any oter upgrade) fails.
softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 10.14.6

Or you could go to the Mojave install page:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683


Downloading videos and saving to camera roll? I need a tweak like "Download Manager pro", which allows you to download any video you play.
The thing is, it saves to its own private storage (and not camera roll) so I can't share them with anyone.

Does anyone knows a tweak that does this job?

There are a few tweaks for jailbroken iOS that can import videos into the Videos app:

Music2iPod (free). I haven't tested this one though.
Bridge ($2).
The paid version of iFile ($4), using the Gremlin library.
YourTube ($4) also uses the Gremlin library and lets you import videos directly from the YouTube app.

you can download form cydia universale video downloader


Could we turn on word wrap Safari Web Inspector? I think it's a bug for sure.

Older Safari versions, it has word wrap in that area but when updated, it seems there is no word wrap in web inspector console.

Could we reenable it again ?
Is that possible ?

Word wrap works a little differently, but actually more accurate, in the latest versions of Safari, depending on the mode you're displaying.

For instance, in the "Elements" tab, it will wrap as desired:

But, like in your screenshot, the "Resources" tab for instance, it will display as the rendering engine intended, unwrapped:

No.  If you can't force line wrap, it's a bug.


What's the difference between rm and empty trash? If I put a file in the trash and "empty trash", is that the same as doing rm file?

I understand that there are questions here asking about (e.g. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]), but no answer directly pertains to the difference in process (if there is one).

Yes, rm removes the file as does moving it to trash and then emptying the trash. One nice thing about moving files to Trash is that it gives you a little longer to decide if you really want to delete them. rm will remove immediately.

If I put a file in the trash and "empty trash", is that the same as doing rm file?

Effectively yes, although the details may vary under the hood. In both cases, the file can no longer be recovered except under certain circumstances1, 2, 3, 4, or perhaps using forensic data recovery techniques.
That said, I'd like to offer this as an adjunct:
I've always liked the concept of "moving to trash" because it gives you a second chance. When I started with Unix systems, I was always nervous about using rm... still am in fact.
And so I was very pleased when I found the trash utility for macOS by dabrahams. There was an extensive discussion here on moving files to the Trash folder from the command line, and IMHO, this one was the best.
Old habits die hard, and so I created an alias - if I enter rm, trash is called. If I'm feeling cocky, and really wish to rm - I have another alias for that.


How to clear the cache or do a hard refresh in Safari? I am used to doing this in Windows with FireFox or IE by pressing Ctrl+F5.

Is there a way to do this for Safari on a Mac?

Go to Safari > Empty Cache, or hit ⌘ Command+⌥ Option+E. To refresh, click the refresh button on the addressbar or press ⌘ Command+R.

Another tip. If you want to restore Safari, like completely clear all the caches, or parts of it, go to Safari > Reset Safari. I use it usually when I need to clear a lot of memory from Safari, for it will clear the webpage screenshots, the cookies, the favicons, etc.

Edit: On the latest version of Empty Cache isn't on the Safari menu any more. It's now on the Develop menu. To show the Develop menu it, go to Safari > Preferences..., click the Advanced tab, and check Show Develop menu in menu bar. The keyboard shortcut remains unchanged, though.

Safari > Reset Safari isn't an option any more. To clear history you can use History > Clear History... and to clear cookies/local storage data, go to Safari > Preferences..., click the Privacy tab, and either click Remove All Website Data... or Details... to view and remove it for individual sites.

If you are use safari browser in windows, then ctrl + alt + e use for empty cache.


What procedure should be followed post spilling fluids onto a MacBook keyboard? I know the first thing to do is dry with a towel the majority of the fluid. Next is to turn off the computer. Then flip over the laptop itself and whilst upside down cool dry the keyboard with a hairdryer for a few minutes. Also leave the computer upside down for a day or so. Is there anything I’m missing?

I'm writing this answer in the hopes to dispel the myths surrounding liquid damage repair.  Putting the device in a bag of rice, in the oven, in the sunlight, next to a radiator, heater vent, use a blow dryer, etc. are all nonsense "fixes" that gives you a false sense of security.  You can actually do more damage after drying things out and powering things on following these internet fixes.
No. Do NONE of this.
The only exception is to turn it off, immediately.

Do not use a towel to "wipe" it up as you're going to spread and "push" liquid deeper into cracks and crevices.  Put it on a towel and pat it dry with (preferably) paper towels.

Do not turn it upside down as gravity will pull that liquid across unaffected areas of the machine

Do not put it in rice or some other desiccant hoping that it will somehow fix the problem.  Rice can't fix anything but hunger pangs.

Do not put it next to a radiator, in the sunlight, or use a hair dryer.  Once you evaporate the liquid, whether by heating or just though the natural evaporation process, contaminants are still left over.

Why?
It needs to be cleaned.
A simple water spill isn't so simple.  The impurities in water are what makes water electrically conductive.  Pure (distilled) water cannot conduct electricity so it actually cannot harm your computer. The problem is water has salts and contaminants and it's this that causes damage to your Mac.
Removing all power and getting it to a competent technician within hours of the spill - not days is the only sure fire way to protect and contain liquid damage. Any other action rolls the dice and can allow capillary action to let liquid seep to every crack, crevice and corner of the device and cause corrosion and short circuits since the battery is still powering parts of the machine when off.
This also is a safety issue if the water gets into the charged battery.
Beverages of different sorts can wreak havoc, salts (metals) are conductive so thing can short out.  There can be acids (juice) or bases (milk) that can cause corrosion.  Corroded circuits can actually destroy components and the traces embedded within the PCB.  For a refresher, take a look at the Mythbusters episode "Salsa Escape" and see what running a small current through the acidic salsa mixture can do to steel.  Now apply that to the tiny "width of a hair" copper traces on a PCB.

How to clean a liquid damaged MacBook
If you don't have the technical skills, don't do this!  Take it in for service.
This needs to be professionally cleaned with an ultrasonic cleaner and electrical solvent.  This requires the logic board to removed, cleaned in the solvent and rinsed in 90% isopropyl  alcohol (not the 70% stuff as there's too much water content).  Then it needs to be dried and subsequently tested.
Can you use cotton swabs and isopropyl alcohol?  Possibly, but it's not reliable.  You'll have better results cleaning the case with this method than you will the PCB or electronic components.  Using alcohol or electrical solvent with a soft nylon bristle brush (toothbrush) will be much better.  You still will want to wash it completely with alcohol and dry with compressed air.
Now, while this will help with the logic board, liquid that happened to get into and in between components (i.e. the glass panes in a track pad) and subsequently evaporated will leave behind whatever residue was in the liquid. This may cause the component to become inoperable. The part might need to be individually cleaned or replaced.
TL;DR

Stay calm.  I know you've just watched your $3,000 baby get a shower from a $6 Starbucks Frap-a-something-chino, but a clear head will help you by not making the problem worse.

Turn off the machine.  No power, nothing to short circuit.

Using lots of paper towels, attempt to absorb as much as the liquid as you can.  Don't wipe; pat or blot; wiping can "push" the liquid making things worse.

Take it for service right away - time is a factor here.  Give the tech full details.  He/she has seen it all and there's no reason to be embarrassed - the more info they have, the better they can get right to the problem and rescue your Mac with a high degree of success.

microelectronics are very delicate  and it is the duty of every owner to protected this delicate devices  water is a very serious chock  to every components because it electrocutes.  the whole board instantly   and the damage is not fixable...when owners of lap tops are careless  they kill the motherboards  instantly..the flow of signals is very acurate and when water touches this flow of signals it fries, the system,,forever death.. right away  no magician  can fix this delicates  super boards..!!  is like being hit with high voltage. of water..


Write permissions on a new encrypted partition The HD of my MacBook Pro (macOS Mojave) is encrypted with FileVault.

Yesterday, I created a new partition from the Macintosh HD (APFS) using the DiskUtility and called the new partition Data (Extended Journaled).

The problem is that now I cannot copy any files to the new partition. It seems that I don't have write permissions to write anything on the new partition.

Why is that and how can I fix it?

I assume this happened as you have used the partition on Extended Journaled
Open the finder, find the drive under ‘Devices’, then right-click and select ‘Get Info’.  A dialog box should pop up and display the basic info of the drive. At the bottom, there is a collapsed menu for ‘Sharing & Permissions’, make sure your username has read and write permission, and check "Ignore ownership on this volume"

If you are unable to do this , then first try to disable Journaling, and do the previous step shared above
Open Disk Utility, Select the partition and then hold down the alt key. Select the file from the top menu and you will then see an option to ‘disable Journalling’


What to use for a plain text editor? I'm writing instructions for a project and at some point, for a certain condition one needs to modify a simple plain ascii text file.

For windows I can tell them to fire up notepad. I thought on the mac I could use TextEdit but the TextEdit version I'm using defaults to write rtf, which introduces all rtf symbols in the file which is highly undesirable.

Using emacs or vi from the terminal is not something I want to burden the user with.

What are alternatives?

I would recommend using TextEdit since it is free and the default text editor on OS X.

You only need to learn a key shortcut (Shift-Command-T) to convert the current file to plain text.

Of course other GUI text editors exist on Mac platform but they need to be installed from the App Store or from Internet (see other answers for a selection of the most popular ones).

There is even a setting in TextEdit to let all new documents start as plain text going forward:

Again, this setting is for new documents, so if a document is already open, ⇧⌘T (Format > Make Plain Text) instantly converts a rich text document to plain text.

Smultron and Notepad++ are two very good options. They both use plain text so even when the user copy-pastes formatted text, the formatting is removed. Both look much nicer then MS Notepad.

Smultron is a small, very easy to use mac-program.

Notepad++ is bigger with many extra options like code highlighting for many programming languages, regex lookup, code-tidying, case change to UPPER, lower and Proper, and many, many more possibilities... Notepad++ is also available for Windows.


MacBook boots up with less than one frame per second This is what booting my MacBook looks like: Macbook booting very slowly (youtube)

I tried a PRAM reset, which was successful (it reseted the speaker volume and now plays the startup sound, which it didn't before), but that didn't fix the issue.

This is an early 2013 15'' Retina Mac, and I'm running El Capitan.

I really need this device, so any help would be appreciated!

Try also the SMC reset, doing it 2 or 3 times does not hurt:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295


How do I delete all Terminal mail? I set up a cronjob a long time ago that now doesn't exist. Whenever I open up Terminal, it now says "You have mail". I have something like 100 messages that all say the same thing. How do I mass delete all of the messages?

Launch the UNIX mail utility by running the following at the command prompt (in e.g. Terminal.app):
$ mail

You'll see a list of all your messages. From the mail prompt, do
? delete *
? q

And that should be it. Make sure do to the q after the delete * command, that saves the changes to disk.

I know this post is old, but I want to contribute with an answer.

to delete your mail messages do the following:

sudo rm /var/mail/[user]

And in order to the question, I suggest you do the following to each crontab you do not want to send an email notification (this way your mail will not have mails)

* * * * * /path/to/script.sh > /dev/null 2>&1

or

* * * * * command > /dev/null 2>&1


How can I insert an image(jpg/tiff) to an existing GIF in Preview? I dragged an image(tried both jpg and tiff) to a GIF file and Preview just opens up two documents in one window, instead of adding the image to the first document (GIF). I have Preview 10.0.

Preview is not an image editor.  It's a viewer.

To create images, you need something that allows you to do this.  You can get paid applications to do this and there are FOSS (Free Open Source) tools available.  Some of the more popular ones are:

Adobe Illustrator (Commercial illustration software)
Adobe Photoshop (Commerical photo editing software)
GIMP (Open Source Alternative to Photoshop)
Pinta (Like the award winning Paint.NET for Windows)
Tux Paint (Award winning paint program for kids)

There are many, many more available on the App store and online.

And if actual photo editing software isn't your cup of tea, Word Processing programs like Microsoft Word has rudimentary image editing built in.

Preview is simple but powerful, and you can add images, remove parts of images, and if you need to edit slides in animated gifs you can.

Click on view and show markup tool bar for the tools to appear.

You can do a lot more editing in Preview than you can do in word.

Even Apple says ya can.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201740

A little more in depth here.

http://teach.southwales.ac.uk/media/images-edit-mac/