How can I deactivate Find my iPhone's Erase iPhone? My iPhone 4s has been stolen and I have activated "Erase iPhone" through the iCloud, but I've found out that this disables Find My iPhone too.

How can I disable "Erase iPhone" to avoid deactivation of Find My Iphone?

Apple doesn't provide a way for you to withdraw an erase command from iCloud. Theoretically, if it hasn't been withdrawn, an engineer for Apple could go in and remove it from the queue assuming:

They could verify you were really you
You figured out how to convince them to do this

As for whether you can still track the device after an erase is sent, that depends on the version of iOS on the device.

If you have iOS 7 or later - the erase action does not stop tracking or remove the activation lock preventing a thief or someone who finds / buys it from being able to use the device. It will still show your lock message and you can still track the device. Problem solved!

If you are on iOS 6 or earlier, you are correct that you will have lost the chance to track the device once it connects and receives the wipe command. If it ever connects to Apple's servers, the wipe will happen and the device will be erased and you should get an email if/when that happens.

I have an iphone 4 (IOS 7) and recently I accidently erased my phone on Find My Iphone from my pc (my phone was not lost) so when my phone finished from the process of "erasing" my phone opened again and it said "Hello" in front like a new iphone would so I kept on filling up the info and then there was a part where it said that I can restore my previous phone info using Itunes or Icloud, I used Itunes to restore my phone and you should also fill in your Apple ID and password. It then take quite a while until its done but when its finished my phone came back almost like it was except that my apps were deleted


How can I activate a 2nd hand iPhone 3gs without a computer? I have bought iPhone 3GS. But have not got a computer. How do I activate my phone?

If it's just for activation, using any computer with iTunes installed will do.

I don't think it's possible. My advice is that you either buy a computer or build it yourself (this way is cheaper).


Problem updating iPod Touch to iOS 5 Using iTunes to upgrade the OS on a 4th generation iPod Touch, the update downloads but when it attempts to install it the process fails with the following message:

  The iPod "iPod Touch (4G)" could not be restored. An internal error occurred.

Any ideas what might cause this and how to avoid it?

It is server overload. Either keep trying or wait till the traffic dies down a little.

You can read more about it in this post.

A possible reason is bad memory in the device. Newer versions of iOS tend to have a progressively larger memory footprint; if the larger size crosses a boundary in to the bad RAM area, the device will no longer boot up. I know of at least one iPhone owner with this unhappy result.


How do I disable sending or receiving "effects" in iOS 10.1 Messages? For reasons past comprehension, the new iOS 10 Messages app allows applying "effects" to messages. It used to be possible to disable the ability to generate or receive these abominations by choosing

  Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion

but since 10.1, this now appears to be impossible.

How do I disable sending or receiving "effects" in iOS 10.1 Messages?

Apple added a new setting to disable playing message effects.  Go to Settings -> Accessibility -> Reduce Motion and turn off Auto-play Message Effects.

With regards to your answer, I feel that most people who were searching this question were having a problem when they attempted to SEND a text message.  I discovered that with the Message program, that when you select the option to send new message, and the cursor goes to the "To:" field, when the person begins to type in the contact's name, and they select the name, the Message program does not default to the mobile number as the option to send it to, and the sender is not realizing that there is a small spinning wheel of death next to the name if you just select it there.  This is where I also was having the trouble.  When you typed in the message and selected the Green SEND arrow, the program was sending us to a screen where it was asking us what text effect WE were wanting to send the message with, and then still not sending it.
This is what everyone out there was running into and not getting the correct answer to.
What the sender needs to do is when they begin to type in the name of the person that they want to send the message to, and see the name come up on their screen in the list, they need to click on the ">" arrow that is at the right hand side of the list.  The contact will then expand for that person.  At this point you will select the specific number or email address that you are going to send the message to, and this will then allow you to send the composed message.
I was having this difficulty with the new company phone that I was just issued, and for some reason the settings on some of our phones were set like this, causing this problem for many of us.
If you would please share this information, I believe it will help a lot of users out there.
W. Wheeler


Using Alt/Cmd + Right/Left Arrow in iTerm Is it possible to move between words in iTerm using Alt + Right/Left Arrows ?
Now if I press Alt+Left I will get '[D' and '[C' if I press Alt+Right.

Go to iTerm Preferences → Profiles, select your profile, then the Keys tab. Click Load Preset... and choose Natural Text Editing.

CMD+Delete -- Send Hex Code -- 0x15

To delete the whole line (similar to Option+U)


Why is shared volume 'Music' always missing from the DEVICES part of the sidebar in Finder? I have a mid 2010 17" MacBook Pro (MBP).  I also have a Windows Home Server (WHS) that I connect to regularly from my MBP.  Normally when I connect to a share on the WHS, that mount point is listed in the sidebar of Finder under DEVICES.

Problem

Under DEVICES, one share never shows:

  Music

All other WHS shares (Photos, Movies, Documents etc.) always show in that part of the sidebar when mounted.

The WHS (named Bundywhs) appears as expected under SHARED, I can take that route to connect to the Music volume.

I can eject the Music volume and reconnect, but it still doesn't show under DEVICES.

I upgraded from OS X 10.7.2 to 10.8, the problem persists.

It's not stopping me from doing anything, just more of a hassle not to have the quick shortcut.

Questions

Is there a reason why Music will not show under DEVICES?

Is there anything I can do to make it show?

Notes

Results of a command in Terminal:

defaults read com.apple.sidebarlists | grep Music
                Name = Music;
                Name = Music;
                Name = Music;
                Name = Music;
                Name = Music;

Results of second command request

 };
            EntryType = 8;
            Icon = <496d6752 00000132 00000000 4642494c 00000126 00000002 00000000 00000000 01160003 00000000 c8c3bb37 0000482b 00000000 019faeb6 019fdd00 0000ca29 d33c0000 00000920 fffe0000 00000000 0000ffff ffff0001 0018019f aeb6019f acc8019f acc7019f a415019f a408019f a407000e 0036001a 00470065 006e0065 00720069 00630046 0069006c 00650053 00650072 00760065 00720049 0063006f 006e002e 00690063 006e0073 000f001a 000c004d 00610063 0069006e 0074006f 00730068 00200048 00440012 005a5379 7374656d 2f4c6962 72617279 2f436f72 65536572 76696365 732f436f 72655479 7065732e 62756e64 6c652f43 6f6e7465 6e74732f 5265736f 75726365 732f4765 6e657269 6346696c 65536572 76657249 636f6e2e 69636e73 00130001 2f00ffff 0000>;
            Name = Music;
        },

{
Alias = <00000000 009e0003 00010000 00000000 00004244 63750001 ffffffff ffffffff     00000000 00000000 00001201 fffe0000 00000000 0000ffff ffff000e 000c0005 004d0075 00730069     0063000f 000c0005 004d0075 00730069 00630012 00000013 000e2f56 6f6c756d 65732f4d 75736963     00090026 00266369 66730000 01000000 736d623a 2f2f5269 636b4062 756e6479 7768732f 4d757369 6300ffff 0000>;
EntryType = 8;
Name = Music;
}
{

"com.apple.LSSharedFileList.TemplateSystemSelector" = 1935822195;
};
Icon = <496d6752 0000001c 00000000 5359534c 00000010 00000000 744d7573>;
Name = Music;
},
{

                    {
            Alias = <00000000 009e0003 00010000 00000000 00004244 63750001 ffffffff ffffffff 00000000 00000000 00001201 fffe0000 00000000 0000ffff ffff000e 000c0005 004d0075 00730069 0063000f 000c0005 004d0075 00730069 00630012 00000013 000e2f56 6f6c756d 65732f4d 75736963 00090026 00266369 66730000 01000000 736d623a 2f2f5269 636b4062 756e6479 7768732f 4d757369 6300ffff 0000>;
            EntryType = 8;
            Name = Music;
            Visibility = AlwaysVisible;
            },
{
            Alias = <00000000 009e0003 00010000 00000000 00004244 63750001 ffffffff ffffffff 00000000 00000000 00001201 fffe0000 00000000 0000ffff ffff000e 000c0005 004d0075 00730069 0063000f 000c0005 004d0075 00730069 00630012 00000013 000e2f56 6f6c756d 65732f4d 75736963 00090026 00266369 66730000 01000000 736d623a 2f2f5269 636b4062 756e6479 7768732f 4d757369 6300ffff 0000>;
            EntryType = 8;
            Name = Music;
        },
                    {

When browsing the shared drive, you should be able to drag the shared folder to the side bar under favourites header.

In reply to your comment. It could have just been accidentally trashed at some point without realising.

You might try opening Finder preferences to see if the shared volume is being specifically excluded from the sidebar.

Make sure the Finder has focus (click on the Desktop or open a
Finder window).
In the Finder menu (right of the apple menu), choose
Preferences (or type command + ,).
Go to the Sidebar tab

Then look for the missing volume in the list.

Hope that helps!


Secure erase drive in Single User Mode My 2007 Macbook Pro has suffered from a failure of its GPU and will now only boot in Single User mode.

I want to sell it on eBay for spares, but obviously I don't want a hard drive with live data on it ending up on eBay.

I know you can destroy a drive's contents with a secure erase in Disk Utility, but as I said, I can't boot into any mode that requires graphics because the GPU is dead.

How do I secure erase the machine's drive in Single User mode?

Normally from the command line, you would use the diskutil command with the zeroDisk, randomDisk or secureErase options to securely wipe a disk. However, I would imagine this doesn't work on the disk you've just booted from. So I suspect you'll either have to find another Mac and connect yours in target disk mode via a Firewire cable, or physically remove the drive and connect it to another Mac using a disk caddy, to wipe it the way you wish.

If you want to completely wipe it, I'd think you could type this in single-user mode, hitting return after each "-----": /sbin/mount -uw / ----- rm -rf *


I restored my iPhone but it always says Activation Error, what should I do? I forgot my passcode so I go on iTunes to restore it, but after the restoration, it says Activation Error after I put in the Wi-Fi Settings. I have tried it many times but it still hasn't worked.

I didn't jailbreak my phone, just forgot the passcode so I restored it. I do not have any SIM card in the phone.

Is there something I can do to get the phone in working order again?

Is there any way that can avoid using SIM card?

**I fixed it ;)**

Activation through iTunes or Over the Air (OTA) is when the device checks to determine if it is factory or carrier unlocked or if it needs a SIM to be activated.

It's almost certain that your failure to activate is due to not having a SIM card from the proper carrier. You do not need to have an active contract or phone number associated with the SIM (I have a 3GS which has an old SIM without a plan), it just has to be for the correct carrier.

well, the only way you can solve this problem is a sim card. if you dont have one, i suggest you ask your mom or dad or friend or someone with a sim card. you can borrow it from them and then take it out and then ur in. i had the same problem. best of luck :)


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

I have tried:

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

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

I am running Safari 6.0.4 with Mountain Lion 10.8.3

Any ideas?

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

I had a slightly different version of the same problem, and thought I'd mention what worked for me.

I develop websites.  To do that, I have a complete copy of each site running on my local network.  When I wish to work locally, I have always just added an entry for "example.com" to my local /etc/hosts file, and that has always overridden DNS, making it possible for me to access the local copy of the website in any browser, including Safari and Firefox.  I can work without affecting the actual live site, then upload changes when they're complete.

Recently, however, this technique stopped working for both Safari and Firefox, but not for Chrome, so for a while I was limited to using Chrome for local development.  I searched google and tried all the suggested fixes -- CR at the end of the hosts file, only one entry per line, various Firefox configuration changes using "about:config", etc.  Nothing worked.

Then I tried this simple thing:  in addition to putting the IPV4 version of the address in the /etc/hosts file, I also put the IPV6 version.

Before:

10.0.1.23       example.com

After:

10.0.1.23       example.com
0:0:0:0:0:FFFF:0A00:0117        example.com

As soon as I added the IPV6 entry, both Firefox and Safari started hitting the correct (local) server.

There are various websites that will translate IPV4 addresses to IPV6; just do a google search on "ipv4 to ipv6".

According to this blog http://thecoredump.org/2011/09/editing-the-hosts-file-in-mac-os-x-lion/

You have to put the entry at the start of the host file. Very unorthodox. Haven't any personal experience of this though.


Bootcamp assistant errors, and disk utility can't fix it Boot Camp Assistant says this:

  The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows.

But when I try to go into disk utility, I have a single partition, Macintosh HD (stock partition), not counting the system 18 MB partition, and it is indeed a "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" format.

What can I do?  Does that small 18 MB partition actually make that much of a difference? I can't delete it, so it seems to be important.

diskutil list gives:

 rikermacbookpro:~ rikerw$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            398.8 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s6
   4:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk0s4
   5:         Microsoft Reserved                         16.8 MB    disk0s5
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           +398.5 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 A2648FC0-6D9F-4DB8-98FF-22D33E028A4E
                                 Unencrypted
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *250.1 GB   disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Riker Backup            249.7 GB   disk2s2

And sudo gpt -r show disk0:

rikermacbookpro:~ rikerw$ sudo gpt -r show disk0
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  778989752      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  779399392    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  780668928     204800      4  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
  780873728      32768      5  GPT part - E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE
  780906496  196198531
  977105027         32         Sec GPT table
  977105059          1         Sec GPT header

Try to delete volumes disk0s1,s4 ans s5 with:

diskutil eraseVolume Free Space /dev/disk0s1

and respectively 0s4 and 5 then launch BCA.

Hope this solves the problem.

Make macintosh HD the only partition formated as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). that worked for me


Toggle "Use all F1, F2 as standard keys" via script I toggle the "Use all F1, F2 as standard keys" setting very often and would like to automate it via a script (or a keyboard shortcut). Is it possible? I've tried to Google the right arguments for defaults write ... but unsuccessfully.

Update: I ended up creating https://github.com/jkbrzt/macos-fn-toggle based of the answers here.

Update II: There's now also — https://github.com/Pyroh/Fluor — a really nice menubar app that allows you to automatically change the behaviour of the keyboard's fn keys depending on the active application.

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal anchor "keyboardTab" of pane "com.apple.preference.keyboard"
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    click checkbox 1 of tab group 1 of window 1
end tell
quit application "System Preferences"

You could also use defaults write -g com.apple.keyboard.fnState -bool true, but I don't know any way to apply the changes without logging out and back in again.

I've written an an app (free) that does just what you're looking for. You can download it directly from http://www.techmasterdesign.com/fnswitch/

The source code is available here: http://www.techmasterdesign.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=668


How do I get rEFInd working with OS X 10.11 El Capitan? I noticed that I could not install and use rEFInd after upgrading to OS X 10.11 El Capitan. This restricts me to OS X so I cannot boot my Linux partition.

I get the following error: error "Could not set boot device property: 0xe00002bc"

You must disable System Integrity Projection.

Restart the computer, while booting hold down Command-R to boot into
recovery mode.
Once booted, navigate to the “Utilities > Terminal” in the top menu bar.
Enter csrutil disable in the terminal window and hit the return key.
Restart the machine and System Integrity Protection will now be disabled.

source: http://mattjanik.ca/blog/2015/10/01/refind-on-el-capitan/

http://www.zealpeal.com/dual-boot-os-x-el-capitan-on-macbook-pro-with-kali-linux/ check this full guide on dual booting os x el capitan and installing rEFInd.


iOS 8.4 does not update apps I have an iPhone 5 with iOS 8.4

Never had an issue untile three days ago.

I went to update some apps from the app store, and it just won't do it. The little circle keeps spinning without ever showing the "stop button" next to the app that also shows the download percentage.

Now I have something like 14 unupdated apps and I can't seem to do anything! I restarted the phone twice but nothing changed.

What to do now?

In addition to the answer of DDPWNAGE and user138479 you may try to update directly via the app site and click on "update" there instead of using the "update all" button in the update tab.

Click "App-Store" ➡ "Updates" ➡ Click on App Name ➡ In App Details click on "Update"

Another option might be to check if there is another download hanging which blocks all of the other updates.

Click "App-Store" ➡ "Updates" ➡ "Purchased" ➡ Check if any Apps have a running circle hence an update symbol and stop the update.

One more option is to connect your iPhone with a PC/MAC and switch it off. After that:
Press the "Power" and "Home" Button at the same time for exactly 10 seconds. The iphone switches into DFU mode and kills all the running processes. The display is supposed to be black. If the apple logo shows up a second time, youve pressed the buttons too long.
After the 10 seconds, release the "Power" button but remain pressing the "Home" button. Your PC/MAC should recognize your iphone and probably install the DFU drivers. After that press the "Power" and "Home" buttons again for another 20 seconds, which causes the iphone to leave the DFU mode and to restart.
Try again to update your Apps.

Those are the solutions I was able to find. Unfortunately for me none of them worked, but maybe you'll be successful.

Reset your network config. You'll lose any saved wifi passwords


Recycle a Macbook Pro into an external monitor I recently bought a new Retina Macbook Pro and I would like to know I could in some way recycle the old one into a external display.

So is there some way to use a Macbook Pro as an external monitor?

I know I could use ScreenRecycler, but I'd prefer a "wired" solution.

Use target display mode and a hook the two together using your Thunderbolt port (on new Retina) and mini-displayport on old macbook.

See more here: Target Display Mode


Why am I having this problem importing photos from iPhone to iPhoto? I'm getting the error

Error downloading image.
iPhoto cannot import your photos because there was a problem downloading an image.

when I "Import All..." from my iPhone. Trying to import individual images I get

The following file cannot be imported. (The file is in an unrecognized format.)
IMG_0301.JPG

In the past I've been able to do this, so I don't know why I'm getting grief now. Anyone have any suggestions?

To help describe the problem I've created a screencast: http://screenr.com/CLr

I seem to have resolved the issue by connecting my iPhone 4 directly into my MacBook as opposed to using a USB hub which I connect everything to.

edit: I also found this to be the case after a long term problem with importing photos/films from my iPhone 5; it was intermittent and buggy, but I was using a simple USB extension cord from behind my computer and eventually removing; because of this, this answer solved the entire issue.

Do you really need IMG_0301.JPG ?

If not you could try clicking 'Delete' instead of 'Keep' to empty the library and hopefully get rid of IMG_0301.JPG and then sync the photos back to the phone if required.


How can I add ".mp4" to the end of multiple files in a folder? I just received a bunch of videos (for editing) and something weird happened. I was told the files are .mp4, but when I received them they did not have a filetype assigned to them.

I can add ".mp4" to the file name, which fixes the issue and allows my applications to recognize the files. Problem is, there are a lot of files.

Is there any way to easily add a ".mp4" to the end of all of the files at once? I'm willing to download an app for this if needed (Mac OS X 10.8.5)

Thank you!

If you're comfortable with the command line you can try this in the terminal.app:

for i in *; do mv "$i" "$i.mp4"; done;

Navigate to the directory with all of your files and run the above command.

Sometimes the file extension is hidden, but it actually exists.

To show file extensions:

Choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced.
Select or deselect “Show all filename extensions.”

Info


How can I manually force a file of a Fusion Drive to the SSD? From what I understand, the implementation of the Fusion Drive is at the OS level (coreStorage). Yet, I want to know if it's possible to manually interfere in the management for a specific file or directory.

E.g. Most Photos in iPhoto are rarely used, yet I would like to push the entire directory ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library.photolibrary to the SSD.

I am aware this may not be the technical answer you seek, but it's the pragmatic solution at present. Hopefully, a non-buggy way to micro manage the tiered storage will become known, but here are things you can do today, out of the box.

ensure all data fits on the SSD so that no tiering takes place.
manually access these files to ensure the algorithm sees them as being read more than the rest. Using dd to read the files would be a good start and rebuilding the iPhoto library databases should also force a full read of the contents. It's not clear reads only will affect tiering in a "mandatory promotion to SSD storage" sense.

Try the following script

#!/bin/bash
echo $1

dd if="$1" of=/dev/zero bs=1m


Why can't browsers resolve localhost? I've got a program on my machine listening on port 8080 to respond to HTTP requests.  But when I try to go to http://localhost:8080/ in a browser...

Chrome says:

  The localhost page isn’t working

  localhost didn’t send any data. ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE

Firefox redirects the request to www.localhost.com:8080 which of course isn't correct.  My research suggests that it is doing this because it can't find localhost.

Safari says it can't open the page because "the server unexpectedly dropped the connection."

However, if I go to http://127.0.0.1:8080 the page loads correctly.

Therefore, it would seem that for some reason OS X isn't properly resolving localhost to 127.0.0.1.  If I try to ping localhost from the command line, it works, but my understanding is that name resolution works differently in different places.

I have read various issues where localhost doesn't resolve e.g. from ping, but I am not having that problem. All the cases where localhost were not working in the browser appear to not have solutions related to the actual problem I am having.  I have also seen places where people have mentioned that localhost does work in the browser, so I am wondering what I am doing wrong here.

From comments
If I try the IPv6 address for localhost http://[::1]:8080/ then I get the same errors as using localhost.

First check name resolution with the system resolver:

dscacheutil -q host -a name localhost

If you get an output like:

name: localhost
ipv6_address: ::1

name: localhost
ip_address: 127.0.0.1

the system resolver works correctly.

Stop your node.js app, create a simple node.js server by using this file with an arbitrary name (e.g. multiserver.js):

var http = require('http');
function handler(req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
  res.end('Hello World\n');
};
http.createServer(handler).listen(3000, '127.0.0.1');
http.createServer(handler).listen(3001, 'localhost');
http.createServer(handler).listen(3002, '192.168.0.5');
http.createServer(handler).listen(3003, 'host.example.com');
http.createServer(handler).listen(3004, 'LocalHostName.local');

(replace the IP of the :3002 server by an IP of your host (ifconfig), the host.example.com of the :3003 server by the output of echo $HOSTNAME and LocalHostName by the output of scutil --get LocalHostName)

and start it with

node ../multiserver.js

Now test your "multiserver" with Google Chrome by entering http://name:port (don't forget to prepend http://).

The first two ports should work with both "names" (127.0.0.1/localhost). So entering either http://127.0.0.1:3000, http://127.0.0.1:3001, http://localhost:3000 or http://localhost:3001 should all yield "Hello World".

Also check the nine permutations of the next three ports and names (e.g. http://LocalHostName.local:3002 or http://192.168.0.5:3004) which should also all yield "Hello World" if the hostname/DNS are set up correctly.

If all this works, your express/node.js app is faulty.

Maybe try to use the port 80.
You said 127.0.0.1:8080 works so I am wondering if 127.0.0.1 works too.
I think if you type in localhost it will resolve to localhost:80 where nothing is listening.


How to access LAN devices and files from iPad, iPhone? Are there any free iOS applications that let us browse LAN devices, so we could access files from devices in same network.

I use ES File Explorer to do the same in Android phone but I didn't find any free application on iOS. Most of the file explorer for android mobiles include this functionality.

Any such free app?

iFileExplorer may be what you need. It is free on App store. I am using it.


How do you add more than one phone number on iMessage? My sisters and I all have iPhones under the same account. I also have an iPad under the same account. I am trying to get the iMessage on my iPad compatible with my phone number, not email address.

The only phone number choice to choose from is my sister's iPhone number. How can I choose my phone number for iMessage on my iPad?

The only way to get a phone number associated with iMessage is for that phone number to be provisioned to an iPhone and have SMS messages active from the carrier. At that point, you can sign in to iMessage with your Apple ID / iCloud account and it will verify the phone number is actually connected to that device and your AppleID will then inherit that phone number.

At that point, you can remove that phone number from that iPhone and use another Apple ID with iMessage. With dual sim / esim you might even get both numbers active on one iOS device.

So, unless you can borrow an iPhone long enough to get your carrier to provide 5 minutes of service to an iPhone - long enough to register, you will be stuck with an email address for iMessage.

By this process, you could have more than one phone number associated with one Apple ID. You cannot however get one phone number associated with more than one Apple ID as the last ID to get registered with iMessage removes that number from any other Apple ID that used to "claim" that number as deliverable.

You can't add another phone number to the same Apple ID, but you can add another e-mail address instead.

Go to Settings -> Messages -> Send & Receive and 'Add Another E-mail...' there.


How do I inspect the power-regulator of a Mac? As a tangent to:
Can connecting 2 external monitors to a macbook pro damage it?
How does one get visibility into which power-source the Mac is running with? Are any detailed stats available underneath the hood?
Unrelated context: My MBP 16" 2020 is in the shop with a bad-battery. When my MBP chose the weaker power-source, combined with the failing battery, would cause OSX to go into preservation mode (fire the fans, dump ram to disk etc).  While I'd love to say that I've plugged things in the correct order, being able to verify cabling is also important.
Thank you

iStat Menus 3 can get the wattage readings from some sensor, along with volt and amp stats. This thread explains all options in detail.


How do I sort photos by date taken in Apple Photos? Is there a way to sort photos in an album in Apple Photos by date taken? The answer must be "yes", but I can't find it. The options that seem to refer to date (e.g., Keep Sorted by Oldest) seem to sort by the date the photo was added to the album.

On the menubar click:

View > Keep sorted by date


Java 7 JRE Not Detected on Clean Install of Mountain Lion I know there similar questions on how to enable the Java 7 JRE on Mountain Lion when Apple's Java 6 JRE is installed as well.

But I just did a clean install of Mountain Lion, installed Java 7 JRE - not Java 7 JDK - and it is not being detected.

I see the Java icon in System Preferences. But Java applications are still prompting for a Java 6 installation from Mountain Lion. And running "java -version" from the command line also does the same.

Oracle's instructions seem to say that I do not need to do anything further then simply installing the JRE. And online tutorials I read also suggest the same.

Does anyone have an idea why this is?

In Oracle's JRE 7 for Mac installation instructions, it states:

  Installing a JRE from Oracle will not:

  Update java -version symlinks or add java to your path.
  Show the installed JRE in the Java Preferences.app

  To be able to do the above,
   you need to install the JDK.

After installing the JDK, go to Applications > Utilities > Java Preferences.app and drag Java SE 7 to the top to indicate that it is preferred.  You may also switch off Java SE 6 entirely without uninstalling it.

Uninstall java by revo and go to control panal and java and settings and deleted files. then click ok.and restart computer then install java again from java.com


Malware? .systemRootModeFile in ~/users/me/library Non-techie person asks:

There is a .systemRootModeFile in ~/users/me/library.

Is it malware, something horrible?

In the hidden library folder in ~/users/me I have a folder named .f5cd.
Inside that is a folder hierarchy of .java/.systemPrefs/_!%... - the last one being a string of about 25 characters - and the folder name is in bold.

Inside that is a file prefs.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE map SYSTEM "http://java.sun.com/dtd/preferences.dtd">
<map MAP_XML_VERSION="1.0">
  <entry key="EXPDATE" value="4994"/>
  <entry key="REGVER" value="2"/>
</map>

and also within the .systemPrefs folder are two more files
.system.lock and .systemRootModFile.

.systemRootModFile and the other files you mentioned are part of Java system preferences and are safe. See this thread.


My iPad has a popup saying I have a virus When I went to a website in Safari, it opened up another website with popups claiming my iPad has a virus.

I deleted some of my apps to try and get rid of the virus, but the popup keeps showing up every time I open Safari. Can someone help me?

You likely do not have a virus.
It's probably just a popup that gets launched every time you re-open Safari.

Go to:

Settings > Safari > "Clear History and Website Data."

You won't lose any bookmarks, it will just clear your browser history and open tabs.

Let us know if that works for you!

I would make sure your software is up-to-date to the latest version of iOS that the iPad 2 can run. Also, close your windows, and relaunch Safari. Hope this helps.


iTunes shows 'ghost' songs on my iPhone that are not there, how do I fix this? When I go the Music app on my iPhone it shows the 'No Content' screen (see screenshot below). This is because I purposely deleted all music from the device (through Settings > General > Usage > Music > Edit > All Music > Delete).

I also deleted all songs (about 250) from my iTunes library on my Mac (moved to trash). I can re-download them because all songs have been purchased from the iTunes store.

When I connect the device to my Mac and select the device's Music list, it shows 7 songs, with a grayed out text color, and with a circle icon with dashed outline next to each song.

The device itself does not show these songs.

When I set the device to 'Manually manage music and videos' I can delete the 'ghost' songs from the device's Music list. But after I reconnect the device the ghost songs are again visible in its Music list in iTunes...

How can I permanently get rid of these 'ghost' songs listed on my device only in iTunes?

Here's what I've tried so far:

Toggled the 'Show iTunes in the Cloud purchases' option in iTunes. On or off doesn't seem to affect the Music list for a connected device.
Turned off the 'Show All Music' option in the Music app's settings.
Reset all content and settings on the iPhone, then restoring from the device's iCloud back-up.

This did not lead to any visible change.

Re-downloading said songs from the iTunes Store to the iTunes Library on my Mac, then synchronizing with the device.

The result was that 3 out of 7 songs were no longer grayed out, i.e. 'replaced' by their actual downloads, and playable on the device. The other 4 songs were now listed twice, one grayed out and the other the actual downloaded song, present and playable on the device.

Deleting all 7 songs from the iTunes library (moved to trash).

I was hoping that would get rid of the 3 songs that seemed 'fixed' in step 2 above, but in fact it reverted back to the old situation, with 7 songs listed in a grayed out font.

Downloaded the songs directly to the device using the iTunes Store app (via More > Purchased > Music).

This resulted in duplicate entries for all songs (not just the 4 songs like in step 2 above) in the device's Music list in iTunes. Synchronizing the device did not transfer the downloaded songs to the iTunes library.

Reset Sync Service on my Mac (defaults delete com.apple.SyncServer SyncServicesResetWorldRunOnce, followed by a reboot)
Deleted iTunes Library Extras.itdb, iTunes Library Genius.itdb, all 'Previous iTunes Libraries' and all 'Album Artwork' from ~/Library/Application Support/iTunes.
Removed *.localstorage and StorageTracker.db from ~/Library/iTunes.
Ran the List MIAs v3.3 and Super Remove Dead Tracks v4.0 applications with iTunes open and the device connected (no missing files or dead tracks reported)
Signed out of the iTunes & App Store on the device (and signed back in).

I use iTunes 11.3.1 (2) on OS X Mavericks 10.9.4, in combination with an iPhone 5S running iOS 7.1.2. All software is up to date.

There is a cottage industry of apps to help people deal with iTunes' incoherent and inconsistent behavior. I have not tried any of those apps, and they pollute the Google results, making it hard to find an actual solution. I suspect my problem can be fixed with Apple Script, but have no idea where to start.

I had exactly the same issue, it's commonly called "ghost songs" and it still exists in iOS 10.x There was no way to remove these songs using iTunes (I could deleted them there but on next sync they were just back) or any delete function on the phone itself (I deleted all music on the phone, but iTunes kept showing the ghost songs while the phone said there are no songs on the phone).

Here is how I was able to fix it:

Be sure to have a restorable backup of your iPhone content!
Download iFunbox
Kill the Music App on your iPhone
Connect your iPhone to your computer
Make sure iTunes is not running
Start iFunbox
Choose Raw File System
Delete the following files and folders:

Downloads
iTunes Control > Sync > Media
iTunes Control > Music
iTunes Control > iTunes > MediaLibrary.sqlitedb
iTunes Control > iTunes > MediaLibrary.sqlitedb-shm
iTunes Control > iTunes > MediaLibrary.sqlitedb-wal

Unplug your iPhone
Reboot it the hard way: Press&hold Home+Start button > 5 sec
 (do not power it off the normal way, which is pressing just Start button > 5 sec and then using the slider to power it off. I did that at first and then the ghost songs came back!)
Once rebooted, connect to your computer.
Open iTunes
Check all your sync settings are still set correctly
Sync

After that the ghost songs were gone.

All you really have to do is go to settings> scroll down to music> show all music> turn the switch off so its grey. That's it


Can you install two versions of an app on the same iOS device? Is it possible to install two versions of an app on the same iPhone and, if so, how?

The scenario would be that you have purchased an app, and a recent update has changed some of the features--not necessarily for the better or worse, but enough of a change that you'd like to still be able and use the older version at times. You could downgrade from a backup, but it'd be nice to have the new version at times as well. Is it possible to have two versions of an app be 'seen' as different apps so that they can both be transferred to the iPhone at the same time?

It's not so much the name -- at least not the visible one, as an upgrade can change the visible name -- but it's the bundle identifier inside the app that identifies it and allows the OS to know it's supposed to perform an upgrade. The developer has to keep the bundle identifier the same in order to actually provide an upgrade and not a new app, so no, you're out of luck.*

*Note that there may well be some way to do such a thing if you jailbreak your device, but I have no firsthand knowledge of such.

Mine just gave me to versions of the same app without jailbreaking or using the computer i just go iOS 7.1 and i git two copies :)


Shortcut for "Action" button on Finder toolbar I am looking for a way to show a contextual menu for a Finder selected item from keyboard.

According to the answers I saw, there is no macOS full equivalent for a Windows "Context Menu" button, but maybe it is possible to have a shortcut for "Action" button on a Finder toolbar?

This is how it looks:

This works for me running OS Sierra..  This AppleScript code will open your active Finder window or open a new Finder window if none are open, then it will automatically click the "Action" button in your toolbar.

Notice where it says "group 2" in both lines of code.  This is the location of the "Action" button in my "Finder" window.  If you do not have your "Action" button located in the exact same location in your finder window, this script will produce an error and won't work.

activate application "Finder"
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Finder"
        delay 0.5  -- may need to adjust this number
        if window 1 of application "Finder" exists then
            click menu button 1 of group 2 of toolbar 1 of window 1
        else
            tell application "Finder"
                activate
                make new Finder window
                tell application "System Events"
                    tell process "Finder"
                        delay 1 -- may need to adjust this number
                        click menu button 1 of group 2 of toolbar 1 of window 1 (* notice where it says "group 2" in both lines of code.  This is the location of the "Action" button in my "Finder" window.  If you do not have your "Action" button located in the exact same location in your finder window, this script will produce an error and won't work. *)
                    end tell
                end tell
            end tell
        end if
    end tell
end tell

Save this script in script editor app as an application.  For purposes of this post, I saved the file in script editor as Finder_Action_Button_Shortcut.app

Open Automator app and create a new service

Be sure to select the files and folders option.  Add a "Launch Application" action to your workflow and select the new script editor application you just saved and named: Finder_Action_Button_Shortcut.app

At this point save your Automator workflow file and name it something like "Finder_Action_Button_Shortcut.workflow" to your /Users/YOUR_COMPUTER_NAME/Library/Services/ folder. (if Automator during the save process does not ask you if you want to install the new service)

Now this service will be available in your "Services" in Finder for any selected file or folder

Be sure to add Automator.app and Finder_Action_Button_Shortcut.app
to the list of applications allowed to control your computer in the System Preferences/ Security & Privacy/ Accessability/ Privacy tab

Next, go to System Preferences/ Keyboard/ Shortcuts/ Services and you should see your new service listed there.  Go ahead and assign your new service a keyboard shortcut and BINGO!  You're done

Here is a link to all Mac keyboard shortcuts: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236

Unfortunately, there is no shortcut to open the "Action" button.


How to stop iPhone from listing iMac as audio source during phone call? I just purchased an iPhone 8 Plus which is running iOS 11.2.1. I am upgrading from an iPhone 6s which I never upgraded to iOS 11. When I make a phone call, the top right option used to be a toggle for just speakerphone. Now, it shows "audio" and there are multiple options. They are: my iPhone, Speakerphone, and my iMac. My iMac did NOT used to appear as an option, and I do not want it to appear.

I want to be able to toggle speakerphone with a single tap, like I used to do. How can I resume that behavior?

What I have tried

Disable Handoff on the iPhone 8 Plus

Disable handoff under Settings > General > Handoff
Reboot the phone.

Disable Handoff on my iMac

Uncheck the option under Apple logo > System Preferences > General > "Allow Handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices"
Reboot the computer

Turn off wifi on my phone

I was curious to see if the iMac would not show up as an option when wifi was disabled, because I don't know how it was being discovered by my phone. Even with wifi disabled, the option still appeared. It must be because both the iMac and iPhone are signed into my iCloud account.

None of the above options had any impact.

Here are screenshots of my experience

On your iPhone, go to Settings > Phone > Calls on Other Devices > un-check the Mac. Then switch off the "Allow Calls on Other Devices" toggle switch and restart the phone.

Also worth mentioning: simply switching off the "Allow Calls on Other Devices" toggle switch does NOT solve the problem - the Macs remain in the audio options list even if that option is off. You need to leave the option on and un-check each device before toggling the option off.  You may not see the audio choices change until the phone is restarted.

I disabled iCloud on my iPhone and that returned the speaker button to normal use.


Moving iBooks library to an external drive Is there any way to move the existing iBooks library on my MacBook (Mavericks) to an external drive and also ensure iBooks treats that as the new location for all future purposes? I am running out of space on my default drive and need to unclutter it.

You can copy, then symlink, the iBooks folder to an external drive.

The iBooks library is stored in the following location:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books

Quit iBooks, then move this1 folder to an external drive. Then, symlink this folder:

ln -s /path/to/iBooks-library ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService

1 In the example above, I moved the entire BKAgentService container, but you can just move the books themselves and leave the rest on the local disk — may improve performance.

There is even more simple way just drag and drop file from ibooks to your harddisk folder .


How to remove wireless network utility icon from the menu bar? I installed the driver of TP-Link's wireless network adaptor, and it ships with a wireless network utility which shows an icon on the menubar.

It is invalid to click or drag this icon, and I even can't find any switches to turn it off.

It looks like this:

The menubar icon is related to StatusBarApp.app

Possible paths:

/System/Library/CoreServices/StatusBarApp.app

# for version 5.0 (2016) on Mojave
/Library/Application\ Support/WLAN/StatusBarApp.app/

You can close the app by killing the process via the Activity Monitor mac app or entering:

killall StatusBarApp

Note: The app will still open next time you restart the Mac

The app is loaded by launchd while booting. The related plist should be located at /Library/LaunchAgents/ and the file name is Wlan.Software.plist.

To unload the launch agent enter

sudo launchctl unload Wlan.Software

To permanently remove the launch agent enter

sudo launchctl remove Wlan.Software

Alternatively you can remove the file /Library/LaunchAgents/Wlan.Software.plist.

After a reboot the icon should be gone.

I have tested this with the installer TL-WN725N_V2_150901. Since you didn't specify any adapter (or driver) in your question the name of your app/plist may differ. Please check this with launchctl list or launchctl list | grep -i wlan.

use cleanmymac 3 for remove te menubar icon


Running AppleScript without activating the window I have a python script to read from Messages database and forward some specific new messages to specific contacts. It works but the AppleScript below to send message is making Messages.app appear.

I want it to send the message in the background without activating or un-hiding the window. Is this possible?

on run {targetBuddyPhone, targetMessage}
    tell application "Messages"
        set targetService to 1st service whose service type = iMessage
        set targetBuddy to buddy targetBuddyPhone of targetService
        send targetMessage to targetBuddy
        set visible to false --> this throws an error on terminal
    end tell
end run

For Me adding:

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Messages" to set visible to false

AFTER end tell, worked like a charm

You could include this code at the end of the script:

tell application "Messages"
  set miniaturized of window 1 to true
end tell

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3564160/code-for-minimizing-application-window-in-mac


Installing *.dmg via CLI How are *.dmg packages installed via the command line?
I noticed that they can be mounted with:

me@MacBook-Pro:~$ open /Users/me/Downloads/installer.dmg

What's next?

Assuming that the diskimage contains a package or packages, you would list the packages on the mounted filesystem and then use /usr/sbin/installer

After mounting, you need to cd /Volumes/xyz (where xyz is the mounted volume)


iCloud Photo Library - force upload On my iMac I imported my old Aperture Library to the new Photos app and then enabled iCloud Photo Library.

The library has about 10000 photos and I expected that once I started the sync Photos app would upload all photos at once.

I've been watching this for a few days, and it looks like Photos uploads data for about 5 - 10 minutes, and after that pauses for anything from 30 to 90 minutes.

Does anybody know if and how I could tell Photos to just keep uploading without any waiting period?

This is not a complete answer, in that I am not sure if there is a method to force or otherwise unthrottle the uploads. However, it may be helpful to some to be able to better understand what is happening during the uploads. I believe there are some cases where the Photos system will change some parameters of how it is uploading, but can't say for certain the reasons or ways of affecting it (hopefully someone can edit this in the future if they garner more information!).

As of Sierra (macOS 10.12), the way to see the logs for the iCloud Photo Library system is as follows (you can likely achieve something similar in the Console app too):

log show --last 1h --style syslog --predicate '(subsystem beginswith[cd] "com.apple.photos.cpl")'
log stream --style syslog --predicate '(subsystem beginswith[cd] "com.apple.photos.cpl")'

The first command above will show the last 1hour of logs, the second will stream new logs from the time it is run. You may get output along the lines of the following (this is style=compact, syslog may be easier to read though)

2017-12-18 14:02:42.541 Df cloudphotosd[373:2205bf] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] Client has put some changes in push repository
2017-12-18 14:02:42.541 Df cloudphotosd[373:2205bf] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] We are asked to schedule a sync session from CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePush
2017-12-18 14:02:52.924 Df cloudphotosd[373:221956] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] Notified that Server has changes to be pulled
2017-12-18 14:02:52.924 Df cloudphotosd[373:221956] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] We are in the middle of CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePush and requested CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePull will happen later in the sync session.
2017-12-18 14:02:52.925 Df cloudphotosd[373:221837] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.sync.pushtotransport] Transport successfully uploaded in 72.56s (48 resources uploaded): <private>
2017-12-18 14:02:52.941 Df cloudphotosd[373:221a88] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] Notified that Server has changes to be pulled
2017-12-18 14:02:52.941 Df cloudphotosd[373:221a88] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] We are in the middle of CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePush and requested CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePull will happen later in the sync session.
2017-12-18 14:02:53.012 Df cloudphotosd[373:221837] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] Informing transport of significant work ending
2017-12-18 14:02:53.012 Df cloudphotosd[373:221837] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.transport.cloudkit] Setting significant work not pending, had been set for 11.69s
2017-12-18 14:04:01.865 Df cloudphotosd[373:221956] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] Notified that Server has changes to be pulled
2017-12-18 14:04:01.866 Df cloudphotosd[373:221956] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] We are in the middle of CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePush and requested CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePull will happen later in the sync session.

These log commands gather all of the com.apple.photos.cpl (Cloud Photo Library) logs; you might want to further limit to a particular 'category', e.g. just the sync engine:

log show --last 1h --style compact --predicate '(subsystem beginswith[cd] "com.apple.photos.cpl") && (category beginswith[cd] "engine.sync")'

Which will show just the bulk transport messages:

2017-12-18 13:13:31.427 Df cloudphotosd[373:20ff1e] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.sync.pushtotransport] Transport successfully uploaded in 37.62s (40 resources uploaded): <private>
2017-12-18 13:15:12.093 Df cloudphotosd[373:21009e] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.sync.pushtotransport] Transport successfully uploaded in 100.20s (40 resources uploaded): <private>
2017-12-18 13:18:50.131 Df cloudphotosd[373:210ec1] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.sync.pushtotransport] Transport successfully uploaded in 152.81s (44 resources uploaded): <private>
2017-12-18 13:19:22.753 Df cloudphotosd[373:2126dc] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.sync.pushtotransport] Transport successfully uploaded in 32.26s (44 resources uploaded): <private>
2017-12-18 13:19:56.137 Df cloudphotosd[373:212866] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.sync.pushtotransport] Transport successfully uploaded in 33.00s (60 resources uploaded): <private>
2017-12-18 13:20:32.789 Df cloudphotosd[373:212a7c] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.sync.pushtotransport] Transport successfully uploaded in 36.22s (44 resources uploaded): <private>

These show how many resources (photos or videos?) are uploaded in each 'chunk', and you can see how much time has elapsed between them. I've yet to find a particular method behind how it chooses the size of the chunk, or the delay between them, but they seem to have varied for me at different times of the day, and whether I'm using the computer/Photos or not (though this could easily be due to other bandwidth usage). I suspect the number of resources is indeed photos/videos, because there are also many engine.sync.pushtotransport events with 0 resources that take less than a second, which I suspect are syncing faces, albums, etc (at least, since High Sierra, now that faces are synced to iCloud Photo Library).

They may be selected with a minimum chunk size, or based on size of recent successfully uploaded 'chunks'. My guess is they're selected to take approximately 30 seconds (based on recent chunk upload speeds), since most of mine are at least 30 seconds (and the distribution of times looks vaguely Poisson, though I've not plotted it to test). One particular thing I've noticed in the logs is messages about the Photos app itself being opened/closed (or foregrounded/backgrounded):

2017-12-18 14:33:13.367 Df cloudphotosd[373:22a51f] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.foreground] Client is in foreground
2017-12-18 14:33:13.367 Df cloudphotosd[373:22a51f] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] Some client is in foreground, current required state is CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePush
2017-12-18 14:33:18.517 Df cloudphotosd[373:2299dd] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.foreground] Client is in background

The fact that this is logged suggests to me that the sync engine considers this in its algorithm for synchronising photos, e.g. it may reduce/throttle the sync activity when the Photos app is open or in the foreground (probably to ensure a better user experience). This is certainly the case for face/scene analysis (they are stopped/throttled while Photos is in the foreground/opened), so it might be a little faster to quit Photos. That said, the messages aren't particularly enlightening, and it still won't max out my upload bandwidth when I do this.

Sorry that this doesn't answer the question in a completely useful way, but it at least might help understand the situations in which uploads are completed faster or slower, even if Apple don't give commands or settings to 'force' or de-throttle the uploads.

More speculatively, I'm wondering if there's any undocumented sysctl settings like the one for Time Machine to enable/disable throttling of particular iCloud Library functions.

You might run into the iCloud Photo sharing limits:

  iCloud Photo Sharing limits

  These are the iCloud Photo Sharing hourly and daily limits:

  Maximum combined number of photos and videos from all contributors per shared album, per hour: 1,000
  Maximum combined number of photos and videos from all contributors per shared album, per day: 10,000

  These sharing limits are separate from the upload limits above. For example, in the same day you could upload 10,000 photos to My Photo Stream, then share those 10,000 photos or 10,000 other photos.

  Some additional limits for shared albums:

  Maximum shared albums an owner can share: 100
  Maximum shared albums a user can subscribe to: 100
  Maximum subscribers per shared album: 100 (the number of subscribers on each shared album)
  Maximum combined number of photos and videos from all contributors in any one shared album: 5000
  Maximum number of comments per photo or video in a shared album: 200 (a comment can be either a like or a text entry)
  Maximum characters per comment: 200
  Maximum number of invites a shared album owner may send per day: 200


Hide Applications from other Spaces in Application Switcher With System Preferences->Mission Control->"When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application" disabled, I would really like the application switcher (cmd+tab) to hide applications from other spaces.

Is this possible in Mavericks or is there a third-party application that provides this? Note, I would prefer the application switcher to remain as it is, just hide the applications only active on other spaces.

Windowflow - free for a limited time and gives some options for different spaces and such.

Witch - 12,99 € and has an option that will only show apps in the current space.

WindowSwitcher - 3,59 € and it comes very close to your needs, check it out.

As far as an native solution to your problem: I don't think there is a setting or command that makes the application switcher behave like this.

Definitely check out WindowSwitcher I honestly think it is what you are looking for!

p.s. prices were correct at the time of posting.

In my application Command-Tab Plus for this function is responsible for this option in the settings


Get dictionary definition of words in spotlight in Catalina? I just updated to macOS Catalina.

Looks like I can't type a word I don't know the meaning of into spotlight and get its dictionary definition anymore, even though in System Preferences > Spotlight "Definition" is checked.

How re-enable the functionality so that spotlight can be used like a dictionary?

It seems like the default dictionary changed during the upgrade to Catalina. I had to go into the Dictionary app settings and select New Oxford American Dictionary (for American English).

You must check the box "Allow spotlight suggestions in lookup". It's on the same panel as where you checked "Definitions"

If that doesn't get it, check the box for applications and be sure you have a dictionary in your applications folder.

When I do a spotlight search on my iMac of the word obtuse, for example, it gives me the definition from my dictionary app. So some way it actually looks inside or uses my dictionary app.


Two-finger scrolling stops working after a while I am running into a strange problem. After a few minutes of using Chrome or Firefox, two finger scrolling on my trackpad stops working on these applications.

Every time I restart these applications two finger scrolling scrolling works again, but then after a few minutes, it stops working. All my other gestures work fine (one, three and four finger movements) except two-finger scrolling.

I have no idea what is causing this. I haven't had this problem before until today.

I am working on the latest version of Mavericks on the latest MacBook Pro.

Any thoughts?

A simpler solution that seemed to work for me in Firefox:

open about:config

and then find the properties

browser.gesture.swipe.left
browser.gesture.swipe.right

and set them from Browser:BackOrBackDuplicate and Browser:ForwardOrForwardDuplicate to empty. It's a workaround for a known bug ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=927702 ).

Warning: This may remove much more than you need!

This solution works but first you have to Enable Hidden Folders to be seen (using your preferred method - I recommend Deeper).

From https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5468141?start=30&tstart=0:

  Close all applications, if you want, you may do so by pressing cmd + alt + esc and selecting each application and clicking on the "Force Quit".

  Then you have to disconnect all external devices (USB, Firewire, etc ...) and any network cables.

  Then you have to disable the Wi-Fi connection.

  Then must click the Go button, located next to the Finder on the top bar.
  Click on "Computer".

  Then in the window that opens has to click on "Library".

  Now you have to locate the folder Preferences> SystemConfiguration and open it.

  Then you have to empty the contents of that folder. If you want you can make a copy first on the desktop.

  Then you have to restart your Mac and immediately after the black screen reboot must press this key combination: cmd + alt + P + R, and hold them until they hear the "dong" of the start three times in a row.
  After that you can safely release.
  And everything should go ok


unload kext when it is in use or retained (cannot unload) I want to disable the trackpad on my laptop without a mouse connected. I need this strange functionality because I use synergy (https://symless.com/synergy/) and game with my desktop.

This is what I have tried so far,

kextstat -kl | awk '{print $6}'| grep -i multi

which gave

com.apple.driver.AppleMultitouchDriver

Thus I went ahead and ran

sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleMultitouchDriver

which gave the error

(kernel) Can't remove kext com.apple.driver.AppleMultitouchDriver;    services failed to terminate - 0xdc008018.

Failed to unload com.apple.driver.AppleMultitouchDriver - (libkern/kext) kext is in use or retained (cannot unload)

To be sure, I also tried another way (which was floating around stack exchange)

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleMultitouchDriver.kext

which produced the same error message.

Thanks in advance! I am a new user so please excuse my poor formatting.

For reference, I am using Sierra and the latest version of MacBook Pro 13 inch (no touchbar).

In addition, these are the links I have looked at,

https://superuser.com/questions/606338/how-to-disable-trackpad-mouse-via-the-mac-os-x-command-line
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5240707?start=0&tstart=0

I resolved this issue by resetting the PRAM on my MacBook.

How to reset NVRAM/PRAM


My iPhone won't back up at all I have just upgraded my phone and I need to ensure everything transfers accurately. However my iPhone is not allowing me to back up. Not on iTunes or iCloud.

I have tried plugging it into my mac to backup and nothing happens. The last back up was last week, and I know its petty but I want to transfer everything over, not a week old transfer.

When I go to System Preferences > iCloud > Backup - I press "Backup now" and it says estimating time remaining and then "The last backup could not be completed."

I am connected to a strong Wi-Fi. I have storage on my phone but it's still not working.

I've had it where i can't back up my iPhone and it's to do with 'sharing' in the iCloud settings. Go to iCloud in System preferences and it should guide you from there.


Songs are continuously being deleted from my phone I recently bought songs from iTunes and every time I go to listen to them they get deleted. I'm able to re-download the songs but they don't stay on my phone for more than an hour.

iPhone 5c

Apple tends to do this because of competitors, I have been going through this for months now and have had at least 6 songs deleted. I downloaded them again, and thankfully apple had let me get them for free. but now, apple is making me purchase them. I am fed up. but heres a tip that hopefully help you out, download them on another website or platform. try not buy them on iTunes. I hope this works for you. and well wishes to you. ;)


How to merge two JPEG files back into a single JPEG (Both sides of a receipt in single image) How to merge two JPEG files back into a single JPEG (Both sides of a receipt in single image) without using any third party software like Gimp etc...
constraints/situation in my case

I had only 2 images to merge, not more
both images were A5 size and I wanted to merge into A4
No third party software. Only pre-installed OS X software to be used.
process to be simple enough for any OS X user

Process followed

select both source JPEG files in finder
Open them together in preview app
Print from preview app to see the print option dialog box
Configure print layout to output 2 pages in single sheet
Select "Open PDF in Preview" from the PDF dropdown menu (a new preview document opens with both source images in a single page)
Save this untitled document as JPEG

I hope this helps. Feel free here to post any other way than this, that might help.

update: For more technically savvy users, using imagemagick :)
convert image1 image2 +append result


What is the Headset icon on apps in dock on iPad? I use ipad occasionally but today I came across a new "icon", which I have never seen before.

I have not connected any headphones to the iPad. So, what is the little "headset" icon on top of the app icon in the dock?
iPadOS: 14

I was just wondering the same. According to 3 Reddit threads this is a Siri App Suggestion based on having used the suggested app with headphones.
These are the threads:
https://old.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/bbjz1d/what_does_the_headphones_symbol_mean/
https://old.reddit.com/r/ipad/comments/78j9k6/headphone_icon_in_docks_recent_apps/
https://old.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/74b74u/weird_dock_bug_when_using_headphone_jack_in_ios_11/

Maybe you were just listening to this app in background? Or using it on your mac?


I would like to get text in between line in pages Am planning to make a resume in pages. I want some of the sub headings to come in between lines. I have attached the image which I want to add in my document.Can somebody please help me?

I am able to get a line below the word summary picture below,

Make some ------------ reduce the spacing to -30% will give you a line type your txt highlight it increase the spacing to 0 make some spaces inside your txt cut and past them to the sides of your txt

           ————————————————  SELECTION ——————————————————

you will need to increase the spacing again on the next line also. better still put it in a txt box , copy and paste for the next one just change txt .there are probably other ways


Should I disconnect my MacBook Pro's power cord when the battery is fully charged? My friend told me that I need to disconnect the power cord when the battery is fully charged. Otherwise, I will shorten the life of the battery.

Other people say you should drain it once a month or point out that for long term storage, you should charge it to 50% and then periodically (3 to 6 months) bring it back to 50% and store it again.

I am going to use my laptop at home 90% of the time. So, I plan to have the power cord connected all the time.

I'd prefer to just plugging in my MacBook Pro and letting it be on charge long term and occasionally taking it away from the charger when I'm not at home or my desk.

Are these specific recommendations worth the inconvenience?

You do not need to disconnect your MacBook Pro's battery. Your battery will stop charging once it is full. Apple's modern batteries are much smarter than previous designs.

To get the most out of your MacBook Pro's battery, follow the Notebook Battery advice from Apple: unplug and use your battery until empty about once a month, then charge back up to full.

At the time of answering, Apple's advice read:

  For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time. An ideal use would be a commuter who uses her notebook on the train, then plugs it in at the office to charge. This keeps the battery juices flowing.

If you need help following Apple's advice, use Battery Guardian; it is free and will remind you when to deplete your battery.

Get authoritative information whether your battery is fully charged or is it still charging by following these steps:

Go to About this Mac
Click on System Reports
Click on Power. Observe "Charge Information"


How do I convert .dmg to .img? How do I convert DMG files to IMG files?  I am trying to use 'Q emulator' to run XPpro and it requires an IMG file of the XP disc.(legal copy)  I'm using a late model G5 PPC with Leopard 10.5.8

According to a very old source [circa 2006]

  In Terminal,

  hdiutil convert disk.dmg -format RdWr -o disk.img

  where disk.dmg is the path to your image (input)
  and disk.img the output image

Try this instead

hdiutil convert <input.dmg> -format UDTO -o <output.img>


How do I send an image via Bluetooth from my Mac to my iPhone? I need to connect my Mac to my iPhone and send a picture via Bluetooth. Can someone give me step by step instructions as in how to do this ?

note: if there's any other way i could do this, then please share it with me

Bluetooth transfer is only available to jailbreakers. If you want to go that route, AirBlue Sharing claims to be able to send/receive files over Bluetooth.

Non-jailbreak options include the $1.99 app Photosync, which uses Wifi and requires a free desktop app to receive/transfer files to it:

  PhotoSync will transform your photo handling forever. It‘s the first
  app that makes wireless transfer of your photos/videos from or to your
  computer and other i-Devices - a breeze.

  Supported transfer
  directions: Device to Computer (Wi-Fi), Computer to Device (Wi-Fi),
  Device to Device (Wi-Fi & Bluetooth)

Or you could use Dropbox, drop a picture in the Dropbox folder on your desktop then use the iOS client to access the picture and save it to the device if you want.

Just get Dropbox for both your iPhone and your PC. It's free and easy to use.


How do you get Mac OS Finder to group folders together when sorting? I have Mac OS 10.7.4 and I'd like Finder to use "Is Folder?" as its first sort criteria, or in other words, group folders before files regardless of the sorting method.

Windows and Linux both do this by default.

Finder > Preferences > Advanced > Keep folders on top when sorting by name

Before macOS 10.12 Sierra, this wasn't an option.
Before 10.12, Finder just didn't have a "group the folders" at the top/bottom. There are legions of Mac users that put all sorts of characters in their folder names so that they sort above or below when sorted by name.
There are all sorts of hacky ways to manipulate the "kind" strings internally, but then everything is arranged by kind first, and secondarily alphabetically.
If this is a deal breaker - check out the many apps that run in place of the Finder. Here is a query to get you started:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/search?q=finder+replacement

In the Finder: View Menu -> Arrange -> By Kind

In Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8): View menu -> Sort By -> Kind
(Or use the Finder's shortcut keystroke Command-Option-Control-2)


Some playlists are missing from iTunes Match I've just subscribed for iTunes Match and it did quite a good job of matching stuff except that three of my playlists are missing from it. That three missing playlists only show up on my iMac which is my source Mac for my entertainment.

I tried duplicating and renaming those three missing playlists with no luck.

Turn on the iCloud Download and iCloud Status columns in iTunes, using View > Show View Options (on a Mac).  Look for items with problems: for example, voice memos, which can't be uploaded to iTunes Match.
If step 1 doesn't reveal any problems, try turning off iTunes Match (via Store > Turn Off iTunes Match), then turn it on again.

I was able to find the songs under "albums" on my iPhone and create a playlist. Not really a great solution but a work around.


Can I use my Mac keyboard as input to another Apple device? Is it possible to use the native keyboard on one Mac, to control the keyboard input of another Apple device, especially another Mac?

And so doing, without having to completely redirect the input device, i.e. disconnecting/connecting a Bluetooth keyboard to switch it between devices.

In my setup, I have a MacBook Pro and an iMac. Ideally, on the MBP, I would like to press a keyboard command or an GUI icon to connect the built-in keyboard as input for the iMac.

Note: Screen sharing is not a viable answer for this question.

1Keyboard is an OS X app that allows a Macintosh keyboard to type on another Mac, iOS devices like iPhone and iPad, Apple TV, PS3 and Android.
I followed the pairing instructions, and while it didn't work the first few tries, it does now. Once I got it up and running, it has worked just fine. Copying, Pasting, keyboard shortcuts and Media keys (Volume, Playback) are supported.
You can set keyboard commands to connect to different devices. I use Shift + ⌘ + > to connect to my iMac, Shift + Ctrl + > to connect to my iPhone, Shift + Alt + > to connect to my iPad.

Why don't you just use screen sharing? When connected to it you will be able to use your trackpad and keyboard with the other Mac.

Apple screen sharing

Further examples


How to disable iMessage on a broken iPhone? How can I disable iMessage for a phone number if the iPhone it's attached to has been destroyed? My sister dropped her iPhone in the bath, so she is now using an older non-Apple phone. Whenever I send her a message, it gets sent as an iMessage (and even says "Delivered"), but her device never receives the message.

The only information I could find was this Apple knowledge base article which states the following:

  If you plan on transferring your SIM card or phone number from an iPhone to a device that does not support iMessage, turn off iMessage in Settings > Messages first. If you do not, other iOS devices may continue to try to send a message using iMessage first, instead only using SMS or MMS.

However, since this iPhone was destroyed, we can't get into the settings to unregister her phone number.

The simplest solution is to contact Apple Support (as this article makes clear) since they actually have engineers that can modify which devices and phone numbers are associated with your (or another's Apple ID).

  So, just contact Apple Support.

Find your sister in the Contacts in your iPhone.  Change her current mobile number from "iPhone" to "Mobile".   Let me know if this works!


Does personal hotspot always use cellular data? If I have my iPhone connected to a wifi connection, then put it on personal hotspot, is the device I'm connecting to my iPhone with using cellular data bandwidth, or the wifi bandwidth?

You'd think it's a silly thing. But I'm JUST out of range of a wifi signal with my laptop, so my plan is to put my phone in a window not too far from my desk, and use it almost as an extender.

Personal Hotspot mode detaches the device from any network and is intended to make all data flow to and from the cellular account. If you pulled the SIM card your plan just might work as a stunt to connect two laptops in the absence of another router, but it certainly won't extend an existing wireless network in the manner you describe.

It's not a silly thing.  I just noticed that someone was connected to my iphone's hotspot while it's connected to my WIFI.  I verified my iPad to see if it was the one connected to the hotspot and it wasn't.  I guess someone close by "figured out" my hotspot's password. ALWAYS turn off your hotspot while not in use!


Repeat a song in afplay I am using afplay to play a song and I want it to be repeat. Is it possible just using afplay?

Loop it in cycle:

In terminal:

while :; do afplay /path/to/song.mp3; done

Expanding what @user3439968 said, if you use the fish shell, you can loop like this:

while true; afplay /System/Library/Sounds/Ping.aiff; end


Will Homebrew installations, root password, hidden users, etc. carry over with Migration Assistant? or with a Time Machine backup? or something else? Here's a similar question: Migrating to new iMac, what does Migration Assistant actually migrate?
The reason I'm asking again now is because this question was asked TEN YEARS AND FIVE MONTHS ago, which was before back when Mac OS X 10.7 Lion was released! Since then, there have been 10 updates to macOS, so I'm pretty sure the information is quite outdated.
I'm using macOS Mojave 10.14.6, and I've made several changes to the operating system such as setting a Root User passcode, creating a hidden super-user account, overriding Gatekeeper to allow installation of all apps, executing countless commands in Terminal, manually deep-cleaning all traces of a bugged antivirus that would never fully uninstall, installing a boatload of Homebrew, and even keeping all remnants of the fabled Macromedia Flash Player. My Early-2015 Macbook Pro 13" with Retina display runs surprisingly fast, but it was a base model with weak hardware. I recently got myself a Mid-2019 Macbook Pro 15" with Touchbar and the best hardware (except the hard drive is 1TB instead of 4TB, but that's way better than the 256GB I've struggled with for the past 6 years– but it runs Mojave, so I'm happy keeping my 32-bit apps that are not longer supported).
I need to migrate everything, but I don't have time to be picky. Would Migration Assistant do everything I need? Should I install from a Time Machine backup? or is there another way that's not tedious but will be effective and not compromise the newer Macbook's performance?

Unfortunately, it does not necessarily not transfer what you tell it not to transfer, nor does it for what you do tell it to transfer for that matter. I told it to exclude one of the users, and that was honored. However, I told it not to transfer certain folders, but it did that anyway. I told it not to import printer settings, but it did that anyway. I told it to import network settings, but it did not regardless. I did have to reconfigure the Root User, but the rest went well… except that a bunch of things went wrong toward the end but I wasn't around to see what they were at the time, so when I noticed the alerts that disappeared the moment I saw them, I became worried. Not a big deal, really. All seems to be operational.
Homebrew transferred just fine, too, btw.
How do I know that all my system tweaks transferred as well? I'm not entirely certain (Gatekeeper will need to be tweaked again, brightness settings are different per the device, and… well, practically everything under the Security & Privacy settings did not transfer [successfully?]), but I had no trouble finding what migrated successfully… at least, I had less trouble when Spotlight finished caching the entire hard drive because apparently it didn't transfer that useful data.
Ironically, it even brought over the broken stuff. Two remnants from my time trying to get Avid Media Composer to work (question mark icons in my Dock, which is still pinned to the right side of the screen like it was on the other device). Probably the most hilarious and frustrating flaw it inherited is my DNS-VPN-Proxy-WiFi-internet-related problem– on which I shall seek answers next.

If you want it to be entirely the same, then you should make a clone of the entire disk using SuperDuper! or CarbonCopyCloner.


Auto Unlock not working on MBP Early 2013 - iOS 10 - watchOS 3.0 - macOS Sierra GM For some reason, I cannot get "Auto Unlock" to work.

Currently running macOS Sierra GM on a MBP Retina Early 2013, watchOS 3.0 and iOS 10 GM.

I've already disabled Two-Step verification and enabled Two-Factor verification for my Apple ID. All devices appear registered on iCloud devices.

Any ideas of what could be the reason?

As mentioned in other answers, the auto unlock feature is officially supported only on Macs that were introduced after mid 2013, and include both Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11ac. As an owner of a 2012 retina MacBookPro, I was disappointed to find that the feature did't work.

However, it is pretty easy to replace the older Airport chip with a newer one that is used on mid 2013 models (model number of the chip: BCM94360CSAX, can be found on eBay etc for around $10 or so). After replacing the chip, the option for auto unlock appears on the preferences and you should be good to go (for me, required also nvram reset and logout from iCloud). Obviously the operation voids warranty, and some have reported it to cause issues on OS X recovery install over wifi. Still, it seems to be currently the only option for enabling the feature, and as an added bonus you get also the better transfer speeds of an 802.11ac chip.

Had a similar issue. It was really bugging me. Here's what I did to fix it. Assuming your watch is on watch OS 3.0 (required). Try simply rebooting the watch after you've made all of your other setting changes. Totally worked for me. I hadn't rebooted the watch since the update.


Turning phone on if lock button is broken? So my lock or "hold" button is broken and my phone turned off. My phone is plugged in to the charger and still won't turn on. Also I can't plug it into my computer because my computer doesn't recognize an iPhone as a device.

If an iPhone is off, and you connect it to a power source (either a charger or computer), it will always turn on. Since you have mentioned that this is not happening, I would conclude that there is something more serious wrong, not just that your power button is broken.

It may be the case that your phone has just 'locked-up' - try holding both the home button and power button for at least 30 seconds and see what happens.

If that fails, I would suggest taking it to an Apple Store and see what they say.

I had exactly the same problem.
Turns out it had 'locked up', and to resolve it without the lock button I just  disconnected, then reconnected the battery and plugged it into a power source. After that it worked fine.


How can I “Open an app from an unidentified developer” without using the GUI? Basically, I used the native Safari.app web browser to download a third party application and I want to run / open it from the comfort of my bash shell / Terminal.app CLI; despite the following error message:

“<unidentified_thirdparty.app>” can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified
 developer. Your security preferences allow installation of only apps from the Mac
 App Store and identified developers. Safari downloaded this file on <today's_date>
 from <the.inter.net>.
                                          |[OK]|

You'll either have to change the settings under System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General > Allow applications downloaded from: to Anywhere or in a Terminal, strip the xattr com.apple.quarantine attribute from the downloaded file(s).

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "unidentified_thirdparty.app"

To do it wisely in command line

xattr -p com.apple.quarantine unidentified_thirdparty.app outputs something like 0081;5e7fec61;Chrome;6585C1D3-E260-4275-9E6E-505DF8D6B7EE
Copy the output string, replace first 4 characters with 00c1
run xattr -w com.apple.quarantine 00c1;5e7fec61;Chrome;6585C1D3-E260-4275-9E6E-505DF8D6B7EE unidentified_thirdparty.app

or, combine these steps into a single command:
xattr -w com.apple.quarantine "$(attr -p com.apple.quarantine unidentified_thirdparty.app | sed 's/^.\{4\}/00c1/' )" unidentified_thirdparty.app

My blog post on this.


Mac app store doesn't show any updates Lately Mac app store has stopped showing any updates. It always says 'No updates available'.

Please see a screenshot here.

It doesn't even show about OS installed. Can somebody share a solution to fix this?

EDIT

I can state that something's wrong on the basis of difference between installed version of 'Numbers' in my system and the version available on App store.

This is a known issue with the fix required of removing your main hard drive from indexing through the Privacy screen.  You may have to add the main hard drive to privacy first, then remove it, then restart, and allow the hard drive to be indexed again.

When I have had problems with the App Store, I have found that the boot volume was entered in the System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Privacy pane. If the boot volume is included, it is excluded from the Spotlight indices, and the App Store uses those indices to determine what applications are installed.

Once the volume is removed, and the indices updated (you have to wait...), the App Store started finding updates.

For better technical details, see: Mac App Store: "Cannot update App Store purchases or updates do not seem available" and "Mac App Store Update issue in Yosemite"

I had this problem on High Sierra. I tried a variety of suggestions: signing in and out, clearing caches, changing time zones, but none of those worked.

For me, booting into Safe boot, and then restarting normally fixed it.


Time Machine seems to think my MacBook Pro is a new backup after Yosemite upgrade I've been regularly backing up my 2011 MacBook Pro using Time Machine with two separate external drives (1Tb at work, 2Tb at home) while running Mavericks.

Today I upgraded to Yosemite, and Time Machine seems to think I have a brand new computer - the backup on the 1Tb disk failed with "not enough space", and the backup at home is currently attempting to back up the entire 350Gb on my computer.

(Previously with the 1Tb drive, Time Machine would automatically delete old archives when the drive was full.)

Is this a common problem (ie a bug)? Is there a way to tell Time Machine to continue where the last backup finished, rather than starting a brand new "branch"?

You may want to check this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/message/27031297

It seems that if you backup external drives with Time Machine and you disconnect them at a later point, for instance for a few hours or days, and reconnect them, Time Machine will want to make a full backup of them (even if nothing has changed). That behavior appeared with Yosemite. I have not heard about any solution or workaround (yet).

There's some coding in Terminal you can do to remove flags osx or os sierra applies to those TM backups, then retry TM again. You can try repairing the sparsebundle files in recovery mode (backup current iteration in addition to the SB to an HDD to be safe).


How can I bypass Activation Lock? I bought a used iPhone 4.  The previous owner re-set the phone, but did not remove the device from their iCloud.  It is asking me for their iCloud information when I try to set-up the phone.  I don't have contact with the previous owner anymore.  Is there a way to remove the device from their iCloud so I can use a new one?

Official steps to turn off Find My iPhone Activation Lock are documented by Apple at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201441

In a nutshell, the various ways to remove iCloud Activation Lock include:

Apple will remove the lock if they can verify the original purchaser is requesting the action.
Self-service removal if you can authenticate as the iCloud account that placed the lock on that device.
Business using DEP can often use their MDM to remove the lock as a self-service action without needing Apple to be involved.

For consumers, you will likely need to make an appointment at an Apple Store and provide the Genius on-hand proof of purchase (to show you're the authorized owner) along with proof of identity and they will reset Activation Lock, giving you access to the device.

For businesses, it depends if you are enrolled in DEP - Apple's Device Enrollment Program or just want to provide copies of the original purchase listing serial numbers to verify ownership.

If you bought the device second hand, stole it, found it or came to possess the device by some means other than buying it from Apple directly, then you will probably need the original owner to show proof of purchase, etc. They will then transfer the device to your account or simply disable Activation Lock.

The only self-service way to remove the lock if you can't type your password into the device itself is to authenticate at https://icloud.com and remove the activation lock when the device is not connected to the internet.

You can use this method to bypass the iCloud activation (it works only for iPhone 4) http://www.unlockboot.com/2014/03/bypass-ios-71-activation-lock-jailbreak.html


Why are my files all now within Volumes? Today I noticed that in the bottom bar of finder, where it shows my file path, it's showing all my files as being within MacintoshHD/System/Volumes/MacintoshHD:

I have this strange file structure in MacintoshHD:

I've also just noticed that I have a folder named "Desktop" on my Desktop:

I can't seem to open this folder, and it doesn't show up in the Terminal.

I have 10.15.1 on iMac 2017 4K.

Update

After a restart this no longer happens

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

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

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

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

It's just Mac's way of naming disks.

On a Linux machine it'd be named /mnt/hdd0, on your Mac it's named /Volumes/MacintoshHD.

On a Windows machine it'd be named C:\

Nothing special about it, just takes a little getting used to.


How to clone my HHD to SSD on my mid-2009 Macbook Pro I'm trying to clone my 680GB HDD to a new 500GB SSD, trying EaseUS and Carbon Copy Cloner. The goal is to replace my HDD with the SSD, so I need to boot from it. There's only about 100GB of used disk space on my HDD so I figured it's doable to clone, unless it's literally trying to copy every sector, empty or not, in which case my SSD is too small.
Any thoughts on how to do this? Would using the Disk Utility be another option? I've read up on Time Machine, or Restore option in Disk Utility, but it's hard to find a clear answer and so far what I've tried hasn't worked. I managed to copy the contents over to the SSD but it won't boot up from it. And when I tried reassigning the startup disk to my SSD, it still didn't boot from it. Not sure what else to try. Thanks in advance.

I wouldn't recommend having the boot drive mounted to do a proper clone. If you have an external drive (preferably firewire 800 for that model, but USB 2 will also work), install a current versions of macOS onto it. Boot to that drive by restarting and holding down the Option key at boot, and you can select the external bootable drive. Now that you are booted to your external, install your clone software of choice, in your case Carbon Copy Cloner (I personally like SuperDuper! but that is me). Once you have the software installed, start cloning the boot disk to the new SSD.
As a side note, make sure that you partition your new SSD before you start the process. That way you don't run into an error because it is FAT32 partitioned and not GUID.


How do I open an iOS app that I transferred to my Mac? I downloaded an app on my phone and transferred it to my MacBook Pro and I got a file of the app. Whenever I click on it, it says the app already exists in my iTunes library and do I want to replace it. How do I open the app so I can use it?

I think there is a misunderstanding here. An iOS app (from your iPhone) cannot run on your MacBook Pro.

If you want to use a similar app on your Mac, I suggest you check if there is a Mac version of the application you want to use. You can search on the Mac App Store or on the app website.

Apple doesn't (yet) support running iOS apps on a Mac.
This feature may be coming in the future however -- their bitcode technology would allow it.
It could be a very useful feature...


How can I get a high-quality screen capture on a mac? ⌘ + Shift + 3

The screen capture shortcut on the Mac is one of the most useful tools I know. It grabs the screen and neatly places a .png file onto your desktop.

But is this the highest quality screen capture you can get? Is it possible to get a higher resolution screen capture? Are there any ways to tinker with the settings of this command?

The PNG is losslessly compressed; there's isn't a possible better-quality screenshot.

I am not sure why people say this is not possible. PNGs will always use lossless compression. You can save a much better quality screenshot by switching the screenshot type to TIFFs.
defaults write com.apple.screencapture TIFF


how to open password protected 7zip archive on OSX As the title says, I'm looking for a way to open password protected 7zip archive. I have the password but cant seem to find an application to open it. So far I have tried the following applications:

Zipeg
Stuffit Expander
7zx
ExpressZip
The Unarchiver

I would prefer any free applications or solutions if possible

Running OS 10.6.8

You can use the command line. One way would be to:

Install Homebrew
Install 7zip: brew install p7zip
Extract the archive in question: 7za x archive.7z

You will be asked to enter the password.
7-Zip (a) [64] 16.02 : Copyright (c) 1999-2016 Igor Pavlov : 2016-05-21
p7zip Version 16.02 (locale=utf8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,64 bits,8 CPUs x64)

Scanning the drive for archives:
1 file, 520 bytes (1 KiB)

Extracting archive: archive.7z

Enter password (will not be echoed):
--
Path = archive.7z
Type = 7z
Physical Size = 520
Headers Size = 200
Method = LZMA2:12 7zAES
Solid = -
Blocks = 1

Everything is Ok

Size:       417
Compressed: 520

I was just looking for a solution and The Unarchiver worked for me. It's free to download from App Store on macOS (I'm on Mojave).


How do I restore Dashboard widget list? (Launchpad-style adding) When using a tutorial to clear Launchpad of its mess I had in /Applications, I accidentally cleared Dashboard's list of widgets when I click the (+) button to add downloaded widgets at the same time, kind of like Launchpad's viewing of apps.

Here is my Dashboard:

And here it is when I click the (+) button to add downloaded widgets in the bottom left corner of Dashboard:

I believe it will only show new widgets I download. How can I get it to show all of my widgets again—including the default, built-in widgets?

(This is my Launchpad: it looks similar to the "add widgets" of Dashboard.app in Mountain Lion, but I am looking how to restore my list of widgets in Dashboard, not Launchpad.)

Also, it probably doesn't make a large difference, but my Dashboard is set as a Space and not an overlay right now.

I encountered the same problem, but now have a partial solution:

If you want to refresh the list entirely, delete the .db file located in "~/Library/Application Support/Dock/", followed by running killall Dock. This forces the Dock to refresh its list of widgets. Unfortunately, the list of apps in Launchpad will also be reset.

You can remove these individually via

sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db "DELETE from apps WHERE title='APP_NAME';" && killall Dock

(from http://www.wikihow.com/Delete-Apps-from-Launchpad-in-Mac-Os-X-Lion, which adds:

 Replace APP_NAME with the name of the unwanted app as it’s displayed in LaunchPad.

)

I wish I knew how to add widgets manually, but I really don't know much unix... If it's any help to those trying to find a better solution, the widgets are located in /Library/Widgets.

Update

In the end I just decided to use Launchpad Manager to delete apps. It also functions as a widget manager.


How to change arrow keys to scrub not skip iTunes tracks? I need to know what text to enter into System Prefs / Keyboard / Shortcuts / App Shortcuts, but I can't find the command names in the iTunes menu bar, nor by hovering any of the UI for tooltips.

I don't think you can set this behaviour anywhere in the preferences, but you can make this yourselves using Script Editor (installed on every mac) and FastScripts (get it here).

Building the script:

Open Script editor, copy the following lines to two separate files, and save them both to ~/Library/Scripts/

First:

-- iTunes Skip 5
tell application "iTunes" to set player position to (player position + 5)

Second:

-- iTunes Back 5
tell application "iTunes" to set player position to (player position - 5)

Setting the keyboard shortcuts:

Download and open fastscripts. Now you'll find it in the top bar of your screen. Click on it, go to preferences and set your keyboard shortcuts. The arrow keys themselves are not possible to set, because they're already in use for skipping tracks, but a good alternative would be something like: fn + ctrl + rewind/forward

Source: SixHat

Use ⌘ + Option + (Left / Right) Arrow.

From lifehacker.com.


iOS Remote.app URL Scheme I've discovered that Apple's Remote.app on iOS has a URL scheme. Opening remote:// opens the app. Does anyone know of any other ways to, say, open a certain playlist/shared library via this URL scheme? Or is it just for opening the app?

You can use URL Schemes to not only open an app but you can use it to open a playlist. example


Hide iPad mail icon without jailbreaking I need a way to hide the mail icon on an iPad as my business the emails need to be secured. I know you can jailbreak the device and achieve it but this is not viable for me.

You can use restrictions in settings, but if you do you cannot access mail without re-enabling it.
To enable restrictions go to settings, general, restrictions and tap on enable restrictions.