CPU usage is too high with Catalina when macbook-pro connected to an external monitor The same problem was occurring on the High Sierra. I was hoping it will be fixed on Catalina but unfortunately, I didn't.

I use Catalina 10.15.1 on my MacBook Pro and work with an external monitor that is connected with HDMI.

The issue is that, according to Activity Monitor, the kernel_task process consumes more than 600% of CPU even when no tasks are running. The computer becomes totally unusable. I cannot switch between screens and everything freezes.

As a solution, I disconnect the external monitor.

Why didn't Apple fix this issue in the latest Catalina update?

=> Is there an alternative solution for this?

I have followed for the rMBP kernel_task spikes when connecting more than one external monitor [duplicate]

I managed to disable system file protection using csrutil disable, but on Catalina now I am having the following error:

mv: rename X86PlatformShim.kext to X86PlatformShim.kext.disabled: Read-only file system

From your observations it sounds like you have a temperature problem with your MacBook Pro. The system makes the CPU sleep when it detects a temperature problem - this what makes it appear as if kernel_task consumes all the CPU time (it actually doesn't). Usually this is due to either: (a) fan problems, (b) blocked vents or (c) lack of cooling paste.

I would check these to make sure that fans are working properly, the machine is not full of dust, the vents are free and cooling paste has been applied properly to the CPU.

Enter sudo mount -a before sudo mv X86PlatformShim.kext X86PlatformShim.kext.disabled


Mac Preview Force Touch not working properly Since I bought my Mac, I always use Force touch in Preview in order to get definitions about words, translations and so on, but now, I've noticed that this is not working.

Force touch itself is working fine (the trackpad reacts to my finger pressure), but the 'Look up' section that I normally used, is not appearing (it is only shown if I select one word, and with secondary click, select Look up).

This is working fine in Safari, for instance, but not in Preview.

It isn't fault of the pdf, I mean, it is not a scanned pdf where you cannot select nothing, but a generated pdf with selectable text.

I tried to figure out what is going on, and I tried to navigate thought Preferences and all menus, but I am not able to find where it could be enabled/disabled.

Anyone knows what could I do?

Thanks

Apple support said that it was a changed after the update. It will sill working on other applications like pages, notes...


Displaying combined file size of selected files in Finder To find details about a files size, you can right click and select "Get Info":

When I select a large number of files, and want to get information about all if them together as a single selection, such as the combined total size, I get the same window for every individual selection, and not a single view for the selection as a whole.

How can I get total file sizes for file/folder selections?

Instead of ⌘+I use ⌘+⌥+I to see the info:

Cmd+Ctrl+I does something similar, but gives you a static Summary Info window which doesn't update as your selection changes, and you can open multiple windows for different selections, which is handy for comparing groups of synced folders for example.

Select the files
right click
hold alt (notice the menu options change)
select 'Show Inspector'


Mac Mail downloads my entire gmail account can i just get the last 30 days? Mac Mail every few days i find that it's downloading my entire account all over again. That's like 8 years work of email - which is really beginning to annoy me.

Can I configure mail to only get recent mail?

Apple's mail will get all the messages by design. There isn't a setting to tell it to stop after a certain volume of downloaded content or some message count or attachment count.

You'll find that altering the server settings if you can will be the only way to change the volume or number of messages.

Exchange has a setting to limit the number of messages and calendar items that sync. Gmail also has settings you can configure (under settings) for IMAP to download only the last 1000 mails. You can also exclude entire mailboxes and folders in Gmail to prevent them from ever being seen by an IMAP client such as Apple's OS X Mail or iOS mail apps.

If you can't alter your server settings, you may have to change the volume of messages you store in that email account.

Thunderbird gives you this option. No server side config required.


Is there a Safari plugin to remove mackeeper ads? I don't mind ads, banners and the like.

What I do mind is the fact that almost all the ads I see recently are ads for Mackeeper. Popups, banners, it's everywhere.

Am I the only one that has this problem?

I've recently installed AdBlock 2.5.13 to take care of the popups, yet the banners remain.

These banners state stuff as: "is your Mac slow? Use mackeeper to make it 21% faster!" I'm really getting frustrated, because:

my Mac is lightning fast,
I've tried Mackeeper on my friend's Mac, and it really is a textbook example of a bad Mac citizen. I really dislike the app (just an opinion).
I'm not going to buy an app to make my Mac faster, because I know there is no such thing.

Perhaps this is a google ads problem?

Do you understand how to use the customization features in AdBlock to detect a specific ad and configure AdBlock to block it?

Here are the AdBlock instructions.

Ghostery extension gives you

  Full detection of tracker scripts, img tags, and iframes from over 1000 data collection services

and is available for all major browsers.


How can I remove the Parallels icons from Launchpad in Lion? I have Parallels Desktop 6 installed and after an upgrade to Lion I got a whole bunch of Windows app icons on Launchpad:

They look ugly and don't have a remove button.
They also don't exist in my Applications folder so I can't delete them from there either.

How do I get rid of them?

The original LaunchPad Cleaner would clean up the icons, but running parallels would undo the cleaning. The updated LaunchPad Cleaner V2 corrects that reversion and works to more permanently clean these parallels icons from the LaunchPad view.

Two other workarounds options are also available:

upgrade to the build that supports Lion, as suggested by patrix (free for v6 users);
disable Windows application integration by right-clicking Parallels icon in Dock, selecting Configure... for the running machine and unchecking Share Windows applications with Mac in Applications section:

Of course this will also make these shortcuts unavailable on Mac.

I found a way to remove those annoying icons.

Download Launchpad Cleaner2. since it's a tryout it lets you only delete the first page and the default icons, like Safari.
So what I did was gathered all the Parallels icons into 3 folders and name them Safari2, then Launchpad Cleaner took it as default and I was able to delete them.


How to "repair" a PDF that opens in Acrobat Reader but not Preview I have a PDF that won't open in Preview; it gives this error message:

However, it will open in Acrobat Reader, but cannot be resaved, or saved with a new file name from Reader:

As I can see all the pages (or most of them at least!) from this PDF, there must be some way to get them into a file that Preview can open. I can do this by copying pages from Reader one-at-a-time, but the PDF has 500 pages.

What is the easiest and cheapest way to export all these pages, and create a new PDF, from Acrobat Reader?

EDIT: I'd rather not have to sign up for online Adobe services...

I just had exactly the same problem. A filled-in PDF form from our tax service displays as follows in almost all PDF readers except Adobe's:

Not one of the normal solutions works. Every single macOS-native save-to-pdf or print-to-pdf option from within Acrobat Reader fails with "Saving a PDF file when printing is not supported."

I ended up having to use PDF-XChange Editor in one of my VMWare Windows guest images to open the offending PDF 1.7 form and then to print to the "Microsoft Print to PDF" printer driver.

A similar driver for macOS which could trick Adobe Reader into thinking that it was just a printer could also work, but I did not have more time to investigate other options.

There's NO reason for Adobe to make it this difficult to export a PDF form to read-only rendered version. Well, it could be because Reader has a truly subpar UI on macOS, so the company has to make use of alternative techniques to retain users.

I ended up taking a screenshot of the form, pasting it into Keynote and saving as PDF. Then I could open it with Preview and fill out the parts of the form that weren't working.


Find files in current folder without spotlight I have often read about how good the MacOS finder is, but I cannot for the life of me work out how to get it to actually find something.

Is it possible to type in a partial file name in the Search Box and get it to highlight matching files in the current folder?

I can find files in the shell, and I also have EasyFind and Find Any File, but surely the MacOS finder can do a simple thing like that … ?

I don’t want to use Spotlight, as it doesn’t do the job simply, and I am looking for files on unindexed volumes.

This should work out of the box, actually.

Open Finder Preferences and set the default search location to "current folder"

In the search box of Finder start typing the name of the file (or a part of it) to get matching files/folders

The basic premise of Unix commands, hex macOS, is that a command should do one thing well and you should be able to string commands together to do more complex things.  Finding and highlighted would be two different tasks. I do not know of such a highlighting tool.

Here are some examples of the find command.

# this closely matches what you want to find. Searching all files
# on your start up drive and other drives which you own.
# files will begin with python.
find / -iname 'python*'
# search only on your startup drive, -x
# -iname ends with .jpeg.  Hence jpeg extension
# type f files not directoryies
# -exec on the files that were found run the ls command.
#  {} is the name of the found file
# \; ends the -exec
find -x ~  -iname "*.jpeg" -type f  -exec ls -l  {} \; 2>/dev/null | sort -r -k 8,8 -k 6,7M

# diy for the rest of these commands
find -x ~  \( -iname "*.jpeg" -o -iname "*.png"  \) -type f  -exec ls -l  {} \;
find /Users/robert -user  1000  -exec ls {} \;
find /Users/robert -user  1000  -exec chown robert:staff  {} \;
find . -maxdepth 1 -name '.bash*' -type f -exec ksh -c 'for file; do; echo "$file" |  od -ct x1; done' sh {} +
find -E ~/Library -regex '.*(citrix|cisco).*' -print 2>/dev/null

When ever I want to run one of these commands, I display my examples of the find command.  I then copy & paste then modify the command.


Blank emails in El Capitan Mail.app After a few weeks of using El Capitan seemingly random messages started appearing blank. Viewing the messages in the Google web interface showed that they were not blank.

Restarting the app usually fixes it.

I deleted all my emails (by deleting mail folder ~/Library/Mail) and started again - and it was OK for about a week - and now it's started doing it again. Rebuilding mailboxes doesn't help.

I found links around the web to cases of this back in 2010/2011 - like this
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2364054

But it appeared to go unsolved.

Is this just a bug in El Capitan - and is there a solution?

To fix this issue there are two ways:

Rebuild

To rebuild a Mailbox in Mail, select the mailbox you want to rebuild and click on the Mailbox menu; at the bottom there is the Rebuild option. Repeat this step for each one of your Mailboxes.

It can take few hours to reindex a large mailbox and if it's an IMAP or Exchange mailbox, the rebuild will have to download again everything from the server.

Reindex

It is also often necessary to manually reindex Mail messages after a major OS upgrade. This is also necessary if Mail becomes unresponsive and/or if search is not functioning correctly or the app doesn't run.

Quit Mail if it’s open.
From the terminal run

mkdir ~/Desktop/backup
mv ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Envelope\ Index*  ~/Desktop/backup`

(replace V2 with V4 for Sierra).
Launch Mail and it will build new Envelope Index files; that can take a long time if there are many messages to reindex and if it's an IMAP or Exchange mailbox, the rebuild will have to download again everything from the server.

If everything seems to be working correctly, you can now delete the backup from from your desktop (rm ~/Desktop/backup).

You could try to delete the whole Mail folder here:
 ~/Library/Mail

and delete the mail preferences files in

~/Library/Preferences

Then reconfigure the Mail. This will of course delete emails which are only saved locally. Instead of deleting you could of course close the app and move the files to another location for backup.

I've seen the same issue happening. The problem occured after switching the mail server. I had tried everything I could think of like rebuilding the mail box, deleteting the mailbox indexes, renaming mail boxes, force re-downloading the emails, re-adding the email account. The only thing that worked was deleting what i mentioned above.


Force Contacts update in iOS9 Sometimes I update a contact on Mac and I need it immediately on my iPhone. Until iOS 8.x, to force contacts to update, was necessary to go in contacts, go back to groups then scroll tu update...easy!
Now, iOS9, scroll to update in groups disappeared and I can't find an alternative way to force contacts update!

The easiest way I find to do that is to create an imaginary contact then remove it and this way works but it doesn't sound a lot as official!

Has someone has find alternative methods?

In Settings, visit "Mail, Contacts Calendars." Scroll down and select "Fetch New Data." Then, on that screen, temporarily turn on "Push," and then make sure iCloud is also set to push, so that new data is pushed from the server automatically whenever possible. This should push through any new data immediately.

You may then want to switch Push off for data, and choose one of the Fetch settings to save battery.

If you sync you contacts with your google account, then simply check your email.
IOS syncs mail and contacts at the same time.


What's the services/running processes manager in Mac OS X? I installed MySQL but I am unable to see if it is running or has stopped. How do I see what are the currently running services corresponding to the "Services" interface in Windows?

For most of the "services" (called Daemons or Agents) you can check:

In terminal: sudo launchctl list

For example only MySQL you can filter the output of the command above, like sudo launchctl list | grep -i mysql. Note -i is to make the filter case insensitive.

These can be controlled with a GUI named Lingon.

There are some other "services", that will install themselves in:

/Library/StartupItems

For those, there is a command like
ps -ef |grep /Library/StartupItems to view whether it is loaded and running. But there isn't a generic mechanism to stop, start or restart.

In which category your MySQL installation falls is impossible to say, as your question is lacking details on what exactly you have installed, what its source is, how it was installed, etc..

you can use top in the terminal in osx… I am surprised there is no command line service manager in osx. Wow!


Tech Specs of Built-in iSight Camera of MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008) What are the tech specs of the Built-in iSight Camera of the MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008)?

Especially: What is the focal length?

Does anybody happen to now, if there is something online, where all the technical specifications of my camera are listed?

EDIT: I wrote a program which detects markers of a certain size. After detection I need to calculate the 3D coordinates of those markers, therefore I need the focal length of my camera as this is an input value of the program.

What is recommended is doing a camera calibration yourself, using OpenCV for instance, to get reliable figures.
http://docs.opencv.org/2.4/doc/tutorials/calib3d/camera_calibration/camera_calibration.html

It is not very complicated, just print out the chessboard pattern, tweak the xml file which has input data for information about the test pattern and also the xml for input images(if you plan on using images, instead of live video through your webcam, I recommend the latter)
Run the sample as it is, following the instructions for keyboard prompts (hold up pattern, press 'g' to start calibration once you see detected lines, esc to exit).


Can I manually limit the %CPU used by a process? I would like to limit the amount of CPU time dedicated to certain processes (e.g. Firefox, Safari, ...).
I can't understand why such programs, even when not used (nothing loading, no animations, running in the background, ...), are so resource hungry. Why must a browser eat 50% or more of my CPU? Can I limit it to 10%?

cputhrottle is the tool you need. You can install it with Homebrew.

You can monitor a series of processes by name by running the Bash script below. I'm not quite sure how to turn this into a login item since cputhrottle requires superuser permissions. Run it as a script, in an Automator workflow, whatever:

# Get the Process/App names from Activity Monitor and put them here
apps=("AppOne" "AppTwo" "AppThree")
# Set the respective limits here
limits={30 40 50)

while true; do
  for app in ${apps}; do
    for limit in ${limits}; do
      for pid in $(pgrep ${app}); do
        sudo /path/to/cputhrottle ${pid} ${limit}
      done
    done
  done
done

[Edited]

I've added a different version for this script (a bash script), which might be useful for people looking for limiting the CPU for multiple applications.

This new script also allows you to specify a list containing the application name and the CPU limit for it.

The main difference is that you can add cpu limit per application, and it will run only once per application. I've also added the option for killing all cputhrottle processes.

The script assumes that both cputhrottle and pidof are installed before running it.

#!/bin/bash

if [[ $EUID > 0 ]]; then
  echo "Please run this script as root/sudo"
  exit 1
fi

# Pass --kill as argument to kill all running cputhrottles
if [ $1 = "--kill" ]; then
  echo "Looking for running cputhrottles..."
  pids=`pidof cputhrottle`
  for pid in ${pids}; do
    echo "> Killing PID ${pid}"
    sudo kill ${pid}
  done
  echo "Done!"
  exit 0
fi

declare -a applications

# Syntax='application;max-cpu'
applications[0]='Chrome;40'
applications[1]='Firefox;50'
applications[2]='pycharm;40'
applications[3]='webstorm;40'
applications[4]='Safari;35'

for i in "${applications[@]}"; do
  app=(${i//;/ })
  app_name=${app[0]}
  cpu_limit=${app[1]}

  printf "\nLooking for ${app_name}...\n"
  pids=`pidof ${app}`
  for pid in ${pids}; do
    echo "> PID=${pid}, CPU=${cpu_limit}"
    sudo cputhrottle ${pid} ${cpu_limit} &
  done
done

printf "\nDone!\n"
echo "Run this script passing '--kill' as argument to remove all cputhrottles."

Source:

https://gist.github.com/golimpio/692145a19666582f84e0e66bb5dd2b2b

Some others have mentioned App Tamer and the fact that AppPolice is free.  That's great, and if AppPolice meets your needs, you can be happy!
But if you use your computer professionally, the time you've lost on processes sucking down resources is probably vastly higher than the tiny cost of AppTamer.
All the options that AppTamer offers that AppPolice does not are there for a reason.
AppPolice requires you to configure each process individually. The only thing it can do globally is stop throttling.  (Which could be done by closing it anyway.)
AppTamer on the other hand can distinguish before foreground and background apps, so that you can throttle an app in the background but give it full power in the foreground. Browsers, for example.


How can I get rid of a "MacShiny" icon from my menu bar? Command and drag will not move it.
I've tried looking into library and user accounts but can't find the source. The MacShiny web site only tells how to uninstall the app itself, and says nothing about how to get rid of the icon.

Down load app cleaner free and use it to get rid of this app. If you have already deleted Macshiny you will have to download it again and then use app clean


Completely clear all cloud music from iPhone I'm trying to get rid of all of the cloud music from my iPhone 6S on iOS 10.2.1.

So far I have:

Gone to Settings>iTunes & App Store> and toggled Automatic Downloads> Music
Gone to Settings>Music and:

turned off (and on and off again) "Show Apple Music"
turned off Mobile data.
gone to "Downloaded Music" and selected to delete all songs - now shows "Zero KB"
Signed out of home sharing

I have signed out from my apple ID. I have signed out under Settings>iCloud.

I have deleted all playlists.

After all of this I have rebooted the phone.

I have tried everything I can think of and when I go to Music> Library or Songs I still see a few hundred songs with the cloud download icon next to them.

Is the only way to delete them individually? This whole system is a joke. I have looked at the similar questions here and have not found an answer that works.

The most recent version of iOS I have used is 7.1.2, but in that version you have to go to Settings>iCloud>Account Name>Delete All Data, and then sign out. It still may not fully work, so you should also log in to your Apple account in your browser (or go to Settings>iCloud if you have a Mac), open the list of devices associated with your account, and remove the iPhone. Finally you may want to change your account password to make sure the device cant be auto added to the account when it reconnects to the internet.

I will be the first to agree that their forced integration of iCloud and refusal to let you remove it is crap. For this reason I might also recommend jailbreaking if you're okay with it. Once an iDevice is jailbroken you can install iFile and manually delete the songs from the iCloud music folder. Be careful though because deleting the folder itself could cause problems.


iPad app to convert multiple photos to a single pdf Does anyone know an app to convert multiple photos from the iPad Camera Roll into a single PDF?

Alternatively, an app that lets you take photos with the iPad camera and saves them into a single PDF would be good - ability to rotate photos is important as this is mostly for 'scanning' document pages using the iPad.

Even simpler than Pages, you can use iBooks

Step 1: Select all photos you want to combine into one pdf within
your Camera Roll, they should be in the order you want them combined
in
Step 2: Press the share button (the up arrow in the box at the
top left hand corner of the screen)
Step 3: Tap iBooks icon prompting to "Save the PDF file in iBooks"

That's it!

Site audit pro

Use it daily for work... Amazing


Why is my attempt at downloading Big Sur failing? I am currently using a MacBook Pro 13" Mid 2018 with Touch Bar.
Today macOS Big Sur was released and I tried to download it but it's getting stuck at 484.4 MB. Initially, it shows 16-17 minutes left, but as soon as it reaches 484.4 MB it's stuck and the timer goes till 10 hours!
My Wi-Fi is totally stable with a speed of 100 Mbps.
I tried to restart my Mac but it still gets stuck.
Earlier there were similar issues in the App Store (even now they are). The issue was I was not able to download an app unless I connect to the US VPN. I even contacted support but they were not able to help out. It wasn't a big deal as a VPN could be used.
But now even with VPN, it gets stuck.

Apple servers had a documented outage to the software updates.

https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/

This is why failures happened globally on November 12 during the launch day of Big Sur installations.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201475 How to upgrade to macOS Big Sur

If you are having issues on or after Friday, November 13 and there isn’t an outage listed in the status page above, and step 4 above doesn’t work follow these steps:

Close system preferences
Quit any apps that cause internet usage (All web browsers, streaming or games, etc...)
Open the Mac App Store and find Big Sur

More details are here on recent changes to this weeks releases - https://eclecticlight.co/2020/11/13/still-getting-errors-trying-to-upgrade-to-big-sur/
If you’ve done anything odd like clearing caches or run tools like Onyx, I recommend you do a safe boot to let Apple clean up properly, then run this command from your terminal.
softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer

If you get any errors, don't worry - wait 5 minutes and try again. (Especially errors about SUPreferenceManager: Failed to set object of class - those do not prevent downloading the latest full installer)

Clear out your macOS system caches with Onyx, reboot your machine and try downloading it again.
In addition to other answers here, I will explain what I experienced after Apple’s screw ups today.

I saw that Big Sur was released around 1:30pm EST.
I started the download and it was slow as molasses; telling me it will take 12 hours to 1 day to download.
Despite that abysmal download speed estimate, I let the download run in the background as I did other things.
Then — maybe at around 2:00pm or so — my system became slow to unusable due to the issues with Gatekeeper/OCSP and application signing.
I stopped the Big Sur download and attempted to get my system back to a usable state by force rebooting and such.
At one point I even ran Onyx to deep clean all of my Mac’s caches in an attempt to get my system to work not knowing about the Gatekeeper/OCSP stuff.
Finally — after some time passed during the afternoon — my system was usable again due to Apple fixing their Gatekeeper/OCSP remote server. And I was able to get back to work.
But later in the day — around now; 7:00pm to 8:00pm EST — I continued to get those “Installation failed: An error occurred while installing selected updates.” messages seemingly endlessly.
Frustrated again, I ran Onyx again and lo and behold… I am now downloading Big Sur; 3.25GB of 12.18GB so far with a 2 hour estimate for download.

So while I am willing to accept the idea that Apple’s servers are overwhelmed, I don’t find that to be a clear answer here. Between the Gatekeeper/OCSP issues as well as my need to run Onyx to clear caches to get the download to start again, this all points to something else happening.
I mean at this point the canned excuse of Apple’s servers being overwhelmed to handle a planned software update seems — honestly — to be silly. Apple can cleanly get iOS updates out with little issue and streams audio and HD videos all the time. But somehow core OS updates fail like this? Nah, Apple screwed up
And I am not the only one to share the opinion that the scale and demand for Big Sur cannot really be considered a factor in this; here is a take on AppleInsider about the issues that happened on November 12, 2020; bold emphasis is mine:

It wasn't about demand
It's also a little too easy to blame the problems on just how many people were trying to download macOS Big Sur. This was a failing, it isn't an excuse to claim Big Sur is popular.
Again, there aren't many companies that can push out an OS update to so many users, but this is was actually one of Apple's smaller cases.
True, macOS Big Sur was a very large file to download, but according to Apple's last unit sales volume data from a few years ago, there are at least 20 iPhone users to ever one Mac owner - and this ratio has surely only increased with time. So iOS 14, for example, was a far bigger deal to distribute from a volume of data perspective.
Apple can do OS distributions at large scale. Apple has now done this many, many times. And, it does it with popular media as well — the download crushes from a new Disney movie are fairly incredible, we understand, with 4k movies of similar size as Thursday's Big Sur download.

But at least there are online communities — such as this one — where we can share experiences to move forward.


Cannot use iOS device as sound input According to this article https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/audio-midi-setup/ams59f301fda/mac
I should be able to use my iOS device connected via usb as a sound input.
But when I follow the instruction the input is shown and I have even enabled it, the bars are even moving but no sound is heard on the mac.

You need first something to capture the input, which can then be routed to an output.
Launch Quicktime Player, elect New Audio Recording & next to the red dot, select your input.
Turn up the volume slider underneath.
This should then route to your outputs, allowing playback. You don't even need to start the recording.
There will be latency, maybe as much as half a second.

Open "QuickTime Player"
Now press SHIFT + COMMAND + N (But first press Cancel if a Finder window should open)
Now select your iPhone as input (Next to the record button) and adjust the volume of QuickTime Audio.


Can I connect more than one external monitor with only one thunderbolt port? Mid-2011 iMac 21.5 inch
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600S CPU @ 2.80GHz
RAM: 8.00 GB

Right now, I connect an external monitor to my iMac using the one thunderbolt port that I have. Is it possible to connect a second external monitor? If so, how?

thunderbolt dock will do it.  get one that adds dvi, hdmi or passthrough thunderbolt.

my caldigit does hdmi + passthrough thunderbolt so i can get 2 displays on there.

Although I am not using multiple monitors on my new Macbook Pro 15" (2015), I purchased CalDigit's ThunderStation 2 model. That product connected to your iMac will provide support for thunderbolt / mini displayport passthrough as well as an HDMI port.  So, you should be able to connect 2 external monitors to your iMac via this device. => http://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-2-dock-TS2/index.asp


Weird character after pressing Esc in xcode Ever since I installed osx and xcode on my new macbook (about a year ago) I got this weirdest problem I can't get rid of. Anytime I press Esc key in xcode, one character gets printed. I can't copy paste it here (it won't paste anything), but it looks like upside-down question mark. When I paste it to the Pages app, it looks like ordinary exclamation mark, probably because of different encoding or something.

This is very annoying, how can I get rid of it? I sure hope it is not a desirable feature. Reinstalling xcode or upgrading from 4.2 to 4.3 didn't help, upgrading osx from 1.6 to 1.7 didn't help either. I would prefer to avoid reinstalling of osx if possible

A quick google shows this

Take a look at your key binding setting and make sure that ESC is not binded

Try reverting all Xcode settings to their original state using

defaults delete com.apple.dt.Xcode

in the Terminal


Severe Wifi dropping on Macbook Pro - Have to restart to turn back on I have a 17" Early 2008 Macbook Pro running lion 10.7.2. And about 3 weeks ago, this problem started occurring where my interent would stop working randomly. I go to toggle the Wi-Fi on and off, but when I try to turn Wi-fi on, it does nothing and the wifi icon remains an empty wedge.

Trying to turn Wi-Fi on from System preferences also does nothing - same empty signal.

But if I restart my Mac I can get on Wi-Ffi normally and it will last from a couple hours to a couple minutes till it drops again and I need to restart to get back on.

I searched all over the web for a solution and tried to

reordering wifi above the other service in System Preferences
deleting 'SystemConfiguration' folder in under library>preferences
reinstalling Lion from recovery disk
Reset PRAM
Reset SMC

Nothing works. And I haven't found anyone on the web with the same problem.

Has anyone seen this problem before? Is it a Lion issue? Or is it hardware, like a messed up airport card?

Any help would be so greatly appreciated.

UPDATE

For anyone else who may stumble upon this issue, I've been dealing with this issue for a couple weeks and took it to the genius bar. After having me completely wipe my harddrive and do a fresh install of the OS and manual install of all my programs, It is conclusively a hardware problem. And the fix is to have your airport card replaced. Which is about $120.

I would strongly agree that in most cases, when WiFi signal starts strong after a reboot (when the hardware is up to normal operating temperatures) and then degrades over minutes, it is most likely a symptom that the amplifier is failing and the WiFi card (or router) needs to be replaced.

You can hold the option key down when selecting WiFi in the menu bar and watch the Transmit Rate and RSSI change over time. A repeatable, measurable drop in transmit rate would back up the hardware fault as a cause for this.

My macbook (late 2008) refused to get wifi from airport some months ago. The MacCleanse app worked for me. Run "scan and delete" with it (loaded recommended set). Now my macbook has kept wi-fi for several days now, without a single drop.


Xcode odd behaiviour and bad rendering code Recently I'm experiencing some odd behavior from Xcode. It jump up and down on its own, it does not render codes correctly.
Like this screenshot ↓

It's driving me crazy. Have this ever occurred to anybody else?
Is there a solution?
P.S. this problem happens with both Objective-C and Objective-C++ and with every theme I use. (Currently I'm using xcode 6.3)

Turn off the Show live issues checkbox in Xcode > Preferences > General (found near the top of the panel).

I was experiencing the same issue. I found this answer through Editor glitch when editing near end of long file in Apple's Developer Forums.

It worked for me running Xcode 7.3 with a 2706 line file. The glitch happened around line 2250.

I think that was a bug at XCode 6. Since XCode 7 I have not encountered this problem.


Speed up Mission Control animations in macOS Sierra Introduced in macOS Sierra, the user can control how fast the Mission Control animation moves to the “end view”, by how fast the action is performed on a trackpad.

I think the default setting is much too slow, and I don't want to overdo the gesture each time just to get better efficiency out of the animation.

This 2012 article refers to settings like these:

defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0; killall Dock

for fast animations, and to reset:

defaults delete com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration; killall Dock

I have tried them in Sierra and they don't work.

Here is a video of the approximate behaviour of Mission Control (source).

Here's a quick list of animation-related tweaks for macOS Sierra.

Don’t animate opening applications from the Dock

defaults write com.apple.dock launchanim -bool false

Speed up Mission Control animations

defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.1

Remove the auto-hiding Dock delay

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0

Remove the animation when hiding/showing the Dock

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0

Increase window resize speed for Cocoa applications

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSWindowResizeTime -float 0.001

Once done, you'll need to killAll Finder && killAll Dock to restart those programs.

You can find a lot more by searching for "dotfiles", and the source for the changes above (as well as many, many more) can by found in this particular dotfile by Mathias Bynens.

I used:

  defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration–float 0

So I just deleted the space between duration and -float, and it looks like it worked actually!


Make the window title less chunky in big sur In Big Sur the window title bar looks too chunky in icon only mode. It looks like the bar was designed for "Icon + Text" but doesn't shrink when you remove the text.
Example:
Icon and Text:

Icon only:

Text only:

Is there a way to shrink the size of the title bar so that it doesn't look so chunky. So it looks more like this:

good news, the chunky bars problem is being worked on:
here's MEMiniMe.
it needs macForge, and it isn't working on mac m1 yet as far as i know, but hopefully ..soon.. we'll have a solution for these horrible fat bars.

It is possible to use the open source app ThemeEngine to edit .car files and tweak all the UI. The V.3 branch is for macOS Big Sur and later.
I tested it on Big Sur and an Apple M1 and, from what I can tell, every part of the theme is modifiable. colours, icons, traffic lights, size of the different UI elements, .etc.
A short feedback report can be found here. This is screenshot of the app:

The downside is that SIP needs to be disabled, a few actions in Terminal are required and you must reboot to apply the modifications, each time. But it does work.


If I have family-sharing do I have to buy everything through it? If my family has family sharing, do I have to use the family credit card for every purchase, or can I buy some things on my own for my personal use and other things through the family sharing?

Once you have family sharing turned on all purchases that aren't covered by a store-credit get billed through the shared payment method which is one charge card entered by the "Family Organizer" Apple ID.

Quote from the Apple Support article:

  After you set up your family, any time a family member initiates a new purchase it will be billed directly to your account unless that family member has gift or store credit.

As a workaround @bmike recommends purchasing a gift card and/or refilling your iTunes balance so that no purchase ever is made on anything but store credit.

Discounted gift cards can be found at Costco and you can also store your iTunes account in iOS wallet app and recharge it at Apple Retail Stores.

Once you have set up Family Sharing all your applications can be installed by other members of the family. I believe only the parents can pay for the applications unless credit is on the account. Other members can only 'ask' to buy applications.

You can find out more information about Family sharing here: https://www.apple.com/uk/icloud/family-sharing/


Macbook pro with windows 10 audio driver install Have installed windows 10 from ISO on macbook pro, but can't get audio drivers to work from boot camp - no MacOS installed.
Downloaded following bootcamp versions and extracted audio drivers without success.
Device manager shows "High def audio controller" - device cannot start.
Everything else is fine.

Mac:
Macbook pro core i5 13" Mid-2012

Bootcamps tried:

5.1.5621

5.1.5722

5.1.5769 (latest)

Am new to Macs so any advice welcome TQ

I had the same problem, I fixed it using the drivers from boot camp 4.xxxx.


How do I connect my MacBook Pro 15" (2011) to an HDTV? I just bought a brand new MacBook pro 15-inch model with highest specifications in this June. It is running 10.7 Lion.

How do I connect my MacBook to HD TV? It looks like it has only the "Thunderbolt" connection for "Apple" monitors.

So should I buy this (first variant):

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/H1824ZM/A/Moshi_Mini_DisplayPort_to_HDMI_Adapt er?fnode=MTY1NDA3Ng&mco=MjI2OTg1MTU&s=priceHL
and this http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MC838ZM/A?fnode=MTY1NDA3Ng&mco=MTk0MjUwOTU&s=priceHL

or just the second variant:

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/H2775ZM/A/Mini-DisplayPort-to-HDMI-Cable-5m?fn ode=MTY1NDA3Ng&mco=MjA4MDc2MDY&s=priceHL

P.S.: this writes

  "Use to connect your Mac with Mini DisplayPort - Mac mini (Video only),
  MacBook (Post May 2010), MacBook Pro (Post March 2010) to a TV or
  Monitor with HDMI connections"

So does that mean that it is not suitable for 2011 MacBook Pro model?

You may want to check out Monoprice. They have a ton of adapters, cables and other accessories, which in my experience have all been of good quality, for much cheaper prices.

They have the specific MiniDisplayport or Thunderbolt to HDMI Adapter you need for under $7. They've got a pretty extensive collection of cheap HDMI cables to go along with it as well.

Just got to Walmart. I bought a thunderbolt to HDMI adapter and it worked perfectly.

Kind of stupid if you ask me since their new MacBook Pro models have HDMI.


Time Capsule Connection Failed after update to Mavericks After I updating OS X to Mavericks, Time Machine backup stopped to work on Time Capsule.

I am connected on internet through Time Capsule without problems
AirPort Utility indicators are green with no errors (as well as Time Capsule LED)
Time Capsule name is displayed in Shared in Finder
I didn't do any changes except for update to Mavericks

But Time Capsule connection fails:

"Connection Failed" is displayed if I select TimeCapsule name in Finder
If I click "Connect as…", error dialog says: "There was a problem connecting to the server …"
If I click "Backup now" on Time Machine, it says: "Backup Failed: The backup disk … is not available."

In my case a serie of rabid and chaotic experiments with restarts and erasing a plist fixed the issue. Steps I did were:

Disabled TM Backup
Removed TimeCapsule from TM Backup Disk (this might not be necessary, you will not be able to add it again until it will start to work)
Saving a screenshot of Exluded paths in TM Options (just for the case)
Renamed /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist to *.bac
Restarted Mac
Restarted TimeMachine
Removed /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist and renamed the old plist back
Restarted Mac again
Added a TimeCapsule back to TimeMachine Backup Disks

Hopefully it started to work. I don't know which of the steps were necessary and which just desperate.

There is an epidemic hard drive failure problem associated with Mavericks.  Some drives (including my own Time Capsule) have been permanently damaged.  If that happens to your TC, you will get a constant amber light and the wifi will continue to work until the hard drive is restarted, because the wifi needs to access info on the disk to restart - something to consider before you unplug your TC or do a soft or hard reset.  If you have any Western Digital external hard drive applications on your computer, you may want to remove them (google Western Digital and Mavericks if that's a concern).  Good luck!


Time Machine stopped backing up my Photos Library two years ago I recently had to restore a Mojave Mac Mini from Time Machine.  It all seems to go well until I discovered that the Photos Library was gone.  After looking through the TM backup, I see the last time it was backed up was 2018.  I did nothing I can imagine to exclude it. It's un-backed-up state is confirmed on a second off-site backup started in Feb of this year; the file simply does not exist.
There are no TM exclusion rules that would have prevented the file from being backed up.

I suppose I'm out of luck on a recent version of the file, but why would this have happened?  Unless I'm missing something, this brings into question whether TM is a viable tool for backups.
Update
I decided to take my lumps and restore the old library.  17 GB of data is better than none.  I did check the next time TM ran and it happily backed up the library!  Note that I did not change any settings.
This gives me great pause in relying on Time Machine for backups.  It archives many of the files on my disk, but if it misses even one, that is always going to be the one that you need.
Also of note, this is the only machine I administer that I don't use a belt-and-suspenders approach to backups.  All my other machines have at least one TM backup plus a bootable backup with Carbon Copy Cloner.  I just ran out of CCC licenses for this machine.

Time machine constantly takes snapshots of each file, this simply is a lot of data, and being conservative is important for the sake of the consumer's end. Harddrive reads and writes are expensive! Especially when it is the eventual cause for a harddrive to fail and a critical system backup is therefore lost on the consumer's end.
Apple offers ~/Pictures/Photos Library to be backed up to iCloud by default, and is cutting a corner for saving your backup. Time Machine also doesn't backup many large system files that apple deems a "defaulted" file from macOS and easily reclaimed from remote apple servers.
Unrelated side-note: You can argue 5GB of free iCloud Storage isn't enough for even the Photos library alone, and you're right. But its incentive for you to pay for their service.


Microsoft Word does not respond to keyboard shortcuts I have a MacBook Pro with Microsoft Word 2011 installed on it.

For some reason, all the editing keyboard shortcuts - such as Cut: Cmd + X, Copy: Cmd + C, and Undo: Cmd + Z - does not work in it.

My friend who also has Microsoft Word 2011 on a MacBook Pro has his keyboard shortcuts working fine.

This situation really hinders my work, what could be the problem?

Check in the edit menu and see what MS Word thinks its shortcut keys are for cut, copy, and paste.

If they're not the keys you’re expecting, maybe something was accidentally configured in Word’s preferences, e.g. some alternate key mapping.

Also, verify that there are not alternative key mappings specified in the Mac System Preferences, both system wide and application specific, that may be modifying your shortcut mappings to other keys.

I have MBP with MSO 2011 also and had same problem. Use "control" instead of "command" works.


Is there a GUI SSH client for OS X? I know that SSH from the command line is easy enough, but would like to give my students that use OS X a GUI option.

Is there a PuTTY equivalent for the Mac?

If you are looking for something that keeps track of servers/connections via a GUI, Terminal.app will already do that for you. Launch it and then from the menu select Shell > New Remote Connection. This will give you a connections manager window.

CyberDuck is a great option. I used it this semester in complement with Terminal. (CyberDuck is fully functional, we just coded in VI, so using the Terminal for SSH worked better for me.)

You can get CyberDuck for free online, or at a cost on the App Store.

Another option is FileZilla. I used it on Windows for FTP, but I believe that it supports SSH as well. It definitely runs on Mac as well as Windows, so it's another option. FileZilla is also free.


Dock not restarting after killall Dock I recently needed to restart my dock in the terminal via killall Dock as I have done many times before. However, after doing so, the dock did not restart and my wallpaper is black:

This is very worrying as, despite multiple restarts and a host of other attempted solutions, I have been unable to resolve the issue. I have also looked in Activity Monitor for the Dock process but I have been shown nothing when searching for it:

This leads me to believe that the process has not restarted. My question is: How can I restart the Dock process to fix this issue?

Thank you in advance for any help, this is a very worrying issue for me as it has greatly limited the functionality of my Mac.

Kind regards, Rocco

P.S. this was the first time I tried killing the dock with that command in OSX Mojave which may be the cause of the problem. Maybe it is an issue with Mojave as I have never experienced this with any previous OSs

EDIT:

This was the exact, full command I ran before the problem occurred: sqlite3 /$HOME/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db "update data set value = '~/Desktop/wallpaper.png'" && killall Dock

tl;dr Run: killall 'System Preferences' > /dev/null 2>&1 && rm '~/Library/Application Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db' && killall Dock

For anyone who may experience this issue in the future, my issue was with the file located at ~/Library/Application Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db.

After doing some googling, I cam across the following two threads, here and here. Both of which suggest removing the desktoppicture.db with rm '~/Library/Application Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db' && killall Dock which solved the issue for me. You can read in more detail about the issue and proposed solution on the second of the two linked threads above

you can just restart your mac and then for me google chrome stopped the restart and the dock was reset so just restart cuz for me nothing worked, hand gestures, f keys, even using ctrl and arrows i had to use spotlight search to open stuff so ya j restart youll be fine


Apps not installing/updating instantly on iOS 5.1 I noticed a strange thing since updating iOS to 5.1.

Pretty much none of the apps I buy or update get installed instantly. They are often left hanging in "Waiting..." mode for several hours until they get installed. I can stop the "Waiting..." process by removing the app and trying to install it again, but it still waits for a while until it installs.

This never happened before as apps used to get installed instantly. Is this normal in newer iOS version or is there something wrong?

PS. This is happening on WiFi.

I had the same problem after upgrading to iOS 5.1. In addition to the issues you mentioned, the Music app got really slow after start up, taking up to 10 seconds to respond to my taps and touch gestures.

As I couldn’t find a simple solution to the problem, I ended up restoring my iPhone to factory defaults (this is basically a clean iOS 5.1 install) and started over. This fixed my problem.

Update: Seems like there is a workaround:

  If you’re trying to install a handful of iOS apps and your entire home
  screen is filled with app icons labeled “Waiting…” without any of the
  progress bars moving, downloading, or installing, you can fix this
  fairly easily with the two methods below. Try the first method before
  going nuclear with a reboot though:

  Tap a single app icon so that it says “Paused” and then tap that app
  icon again to see if it resumes downloading If pausing and resuming
  didn’t work: Reboot the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch You may notice a
  related issue where apps from the App Store will say they’re
  “Installing” though they aren’t appearing on the iOS home screen yet,
  that is also resolved with a reboot.

  It’s not totally clear what causes this, though it seems that a lot of
  people are encountering the problem right now when moving from an old
  iPad to a new one. It could be that Apple’s servers are just
  overloaded with downloads from the App Store, or it could be a bug.

Do you have to have service? because my iPhone wont install the update it ceaps saying
I'm not connected to the Internet but I am!


Can I disable auto-correction of a single word on OS X? I'm running into an annoying issue with OS X's automatic spelling correction where the word nala gets automatically corrected to napa.

I've tried adding nala to my custom dictionary under ~/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary but it still reliably makes the correction anyway.

How do I configure OS X to not automatically correct a given word short of turning off automatic correction entirely which is not really desirable?

Yes you can do it.

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Text.
Click the + sign on the bottom left to add a new text replacement.
In the Replace column, put the word you want OS X to stop autocorrecting (no spaces are allowed).
In the With column, put the exact same word you put in the Replace column.

Voila.  You're done.

This has worked flawlessly for me every time.

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard . Go to text tab. Uncheck "Correct spelling automatically".


Tracking of a stolen iphone My iPhone has been stolen yesterday.
I have put it in lost mode from icloud at same day.

It is showing "Lost mode is pending" because it is switched off.

But my iphone is configured with touch ID so user is not able
to conntect to internet then what are the possibilities to track via icloud.

And any other options to track it ?

Have you put a passcode on your iPhone? If yes then, the chance for thief to use your iPhone is slim. But if the one who stole your iPhone knows something about getting into the phone system like jail breaking, then there's some possibilities that he can use it.


MBP won't restart or shutdown (macOS Sierra) I'm desperately trying to fix the issue which doesn't let my MacBook Pro restart/shutdown properly. When I click on restart or shutdown, it gets stuck when the display gets black (but still slightly on, also keyboard lights are on) forever (once let it try to restart/shutdown the whole night).

When I bought the mbp, it was El Capitan installed. I've upgraded to Sierra (now 10.12.3) and then problems started, but I'm really not if it happened right after the upgrade or sometime later.

After booting into safe mode, restart/shutdown works.

Things I've tried so far:

close/force quit all apps before restart/shut down
relaunch finder before restart/shut down
removed all apps from login items
tried another user profile
ran "First Aid" on Disk Utility
restart/shut down works after booting into safe mode
reseted SMC
reseted NVRAM
ran Apple Diagnostics (no issues)
ran cache clearing commands:

rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/*;
rm -rf ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/*;
sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/*;
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/*;
atsutil databases -removeUser;
sudo atsutil databases -remove;
sudo atsutil server -shutdown;
sudo atsutil server -ping;
sudo rm -rf /var/folders/*

deleted all printers
tried shutdown -r now
removed com.apple.finder.plist & com.apple.sidebarlists.plist
ran a system update so permissions are going to be repaired

Fixing permissions on my drive solved the issue.  I was able to find a solution on this Apple Discussion thread.


"The document could not be saved" - Preview error I have the issue on macOS Sierra(10.12.1) and still have it on High Sierra(10.13.3).

I get this error message(not all the time) a lot after editing an image, and trying to save it. I can't quit Preview either, so the only way to close Preview for me when this happens is to force quit Preview.

Clicking on duplicate doesn't work because my edits made to the original document don't carry over and Preview still doesn't quit.

I was facing the same issue, I finally got the issue resolved by following steps:

Go to File
Click option 'Export as pdf'
Save the file name with pdf extension (like 'file_name.pdf')

This worked for me, so give it a try.

Problem: Another common reason for this issue is the PDF file is password protected.
Solution: You can remove the password (if you are allowed) using a free tool like Smallpdf


This item will be deleted immediately. You can’t undo this action I have a MacBook Pro which has a SSD and a hard drive. Here SSD hosts the operating system and HDD stores some files (pic., doc., etc). 1 week ago I reset my system and installed OS X El Capitan. After this whenever I try to delete a file from my storage drive I have this warning "This item will be deleted immediately. You can’t undo this action.".

Is there anyway any files from storage to go to trash instead of permanently delete?

I used Onyx to secure delete the trash and it went back to normal.


Mac won't boot: Way to mount drive and delete one file? My macbook is currently a brick. I added a /etc/launchctl.conf file that must be malformed. The OS now crashes even when attempting to start in safe mode:

"launchd System bootstrapper has crashed: Seg fault"

I tried booting from a 10.6 boot CD but it just spun and spun. I have been able to boot an Ubuntu Live CD and mount the mac partition, but the hfsplus partition is always mounted read-only.

There must be an Apple utility I can use to get to a live terminal and delete this single file that is preventing my laptop from booting? If I can get the OSX install CD to boot will there be a utility that can help me?

You can boot into single user mode by holding Command + s at startup.

Single user mode starts you directly at the console, bypassing core Mac OS X startup processes. You should be able to remove or alter the offending file from there.

I used a Microsoft install disk erased my hard drive and started over. Problem solved for me. I already had what I needed backed up on an external harddrive.


Transfer Clash of Clans village with iOS 6 I would like to know if there is any way to transfer your village in clash of clans using iOS 6. I recently erased all the data of my iPod and re-downloaded all my apps. I opened clash of clans with my old Game Center and tried to get my village back but I received a message saying i need iOS 7 or higher to transfer my village, but I can't upgrade since I only have an iPod fourth gen. How can I get my village back?

i got this too but i think you might want to see this vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9Ndjzr89B8

it might help u to ix ur prbolem u dont reall  need ios7 device just one with ur base. in ur case u do need ios 7 device may be ur brothers? or dads?


Cannot open Java Preferences I don't know what the problem is. I recently went to Lion (Developer Preview) and restored a fresh new copy of 10.6. I later updated everything and then tried to open Java. It keeps giving me this error.

Cannot open Java Preferences 10.6
No compatible version of Java 1.5+ is available

I've tried reinstalling the update, but it doesn't do anything.

:P, solved it. I just plugged my 10.6 restore disk in and ran the setup. I then updated the software, and voila, I fixed it.

Launch the preference panel with this terminal command:

javaws -viewer


MacBook: Should I close all applications before going to sleep? Picture this:
It's 2 am, I'm coding, got XCode, a Browser, a Terminal... running and want to call it a day. I know very well that the next thing I'm doing on my MacBook is exactly where I left off, so with the same windows, tabs etc.
My question is:
Is it good practice to close all my applications before I put my MacBook to sleep (not shut down, just sleep)?
I've found an old post where they discussed this, regarding the time it takes to wake up your MacBook and get back to work. But what I want to know is, if leaving applications open drains my battery, or if it has any bad effects on my device over the long term.
Thanks

...what I want to know is, if leaving applications open drains my battery, or if it has any bad effects on my device over the long term.

Yes, it drains your battery, but it uses a fraction of energy than when awake.  When your Mac goes to sleep, it suspends all of your applications in their current state in memory meaning that (CPU) processing and disk activity have all been stopped, but the application state is in memory being supported by battery - so yes, your battery will drain.
However, when your Mac goes into hibernation it will write those saved states to a sleep image in which your Mac is all but turned off.  If the battery drains completely, the memory states though lost in RAM are preserved in the sleep image.
For more information, see Use sleep and Energy Saver on your Mac

or if it has any bad effects on my device over the long term.

Why would it?  Whether your Mac is fully operational and memory is being utilized versus in sleep mode where memory is also being utilized, there’s nothing that the latter condition is going to do to “have bad effects on your device over the long term.”   Memory just holds values and when you get down to it, it's simply holding on or off states (the 1s and 0s) representing values.
Whether it’s holding a spreadsheet, an photo, an animation, or the state of your application, it affects the memory no differently.  It doesn’t matter if your CPU is doing things with that memory or it’s in a static state, it doesn’t have adverse effects to your computer - it’s doing what it’s designed to do - hold on/off states representing values so long as there’s power.  In fact, an argument can be made that computer that’s awake causes more “wear” on one that’s asleep or hibernating.
Bottom line, the sleep/hibernate function has been used on all computers - Windows, macOS, and BSD/Linux alike across many different architectures like X86, ARM, RISC, SPARC and PowerPC - it’s a mature technology that works very well.  It’s designed to be a convenience feature that has no detrimental effects to your system.

Most of the time I will close many applications when going to sleep or traveling with the laptop.  I find that Apple Mail (when using Exchange Email Server) does not connect again all the time.  So I quit mail every time when traveling from work to home.
Some other applications I will close as well, anything that is easy to resume or reconnect.
My Macbook has 32GB of RAM and with everything open for work I am pushing that limit of RAM and the CPU does not seem to keep up all the time, so sleeping with everything running does not work as well as I wish.
I do leave Safari and Chrome running while in sleep and they have probably over 100 tabs and multiple Windows open. This seems to work for me.  However they need a restart once in a while as well.
I do close down:  Apple Mail, Microsoft Office tools, Remote Desktop, TeamViewer, and many others.
Like Steve commented, "Best practice is to use the Mac the best way it works for you. "


Cannot download picture from iCloud Photo Library Cannot Download Photo.
  There was an error downloading this photo from your iCloud Photo Library. Please try again later.

What does this mean?  It happens all the time.

I have experienced the 'error downloading try again later message' of my iCloud photos, it has been quite a while since I could access full resolution photos, I only get blurry photos.
Had no idea what was going on or how to fix the issue, by chance I have in my case.  I only had the 5GB storage option and I kept getting messages to upgrade the amount of storage,  I chose to $1.48 a month option 50GB.

Straight away the iCloud was uploading over 900 photos which made me realise why I was getting errors accessing my iCloud photos, they weren't there yet, only the low res thumbnails. All the issues I had are gone I just had to have larger storage and then allow the photos to upload. In all cases make sure and check you allow time for uploading.

The conclusion I come to is that if I get close to storage capacity iCloud stops uploading and all I see are the thumbnails photos which are not my full resolution iCloud photos.

All is good now.

I had the same issue. I worked with the Apple engineers. Here was their answer. I deleted Clean My Mac 3 and it now works perfectly!

From Apple:
Engineering has noted that you may be using a 3rd party cleaner application which could be contributing to the issue. These apps are like CleanMyMac3 or Dr. Cleaner. If you are using these, please remove them and see if the issue goes away.


Update emacs that comes with OS X Is there a way to update the emacs terminal editor that comes with OS X? I could remove the binaries and install Emacs using a dmg package, but the idea was to upgrade to a newer version with some command.

Apple controls when / if they update emacs so most people just install a newer version of the tool and change their PATH variable so the new version is found first and runs by default.

If you like the sound of that, I recommend installing Homebrew:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Then install emacs:

brew install emacs

Add a link so that it'll work as emacs in the Terminal:

ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/emacs/24.5/Emacs.app /Applications

This will install the 'stable' version. As of this writing, that's 24.5:

» brew info emacs
emacs: stable 24.5 (bottled), devel 25.0-dev, HEAD
GNU Emacs text editor
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

This is significantly newer (24.5.1) than the version that came with El Capitan (22.1.1):

» emacs --version
GNU Emacs 22.1.1

When using the brew command the correct command is brew upgrade emacs even if you have done a brew update, the install will install Emacs 25, the older version.

Just sharing my experience.


Set page for PDF to open to In Adobe Acrobat (2019) you can set the page that appears when you open the PDF in the File > Properties > Initial View (tab). Preview always opens the document to page 1. Adobe Acrobat Mac/Win will open the document on the specified page. Does Preview support this functionality?

No. Preview does not respect the PDF Initial View metadata. Other Readers, such as Skim and PDFPen Pro, also do not. Instead, all of these apps open at page 1 and then remember the last page viewed for the next time the document is opened. Foxit Reader does respect the Initial View.

Your best solution is to provide a Table of Contents (aka Bookmarks, Outlines), so that users can easily click to the desired page.

It's worth noting that Preview's own 'Bookmarks' are not PDF-standard, and will not be displayed by any other PDF Viewer.

Yes indirectly. Go to the page you wish to open your file to next time you open it in Preview. Once there go to the File menu and select save. Then close the file. Next time you open the file in Preview it will open to that spot.


Compress PDF with adjustable ratio One can use Preview to compress a PDF. However Preview on Mac OS X 10.7 does a too hard compression for my taste. There is only one compression setting.

Are there alternative tools that allows you to adjust the compression ratio?

As Guy mentioned, ColorSync Utility is what your looking for. For me the standard compression was also too little resolution & too lossy compression. So I created a new filter in ColorSync - which then becomes available in e.g. Preview: Resolution 200 dpi, jpeg quality ~75%

Step 1: Open ColorSync Utility & create the new filter such as below

The above settings give me files with acceptable size and decent quality (e.g. for sending by e-mail)

Step 2: Open the PDF in Preview, then choose File > Export, Click the Quartz Filter pop-up menu, then choose the relevant filter ("Reduce File Size 200dpi" in this case)

Edit 2011-12-18: Seems for Lion it's not that straight forward regarding Preview integration. See here:

  Just copy your filter from /Users/YourName/Library/Filters/ to /Library/PDF Services/ and the customized profile will be back in preview.

To compress a PDF using some settings, you can use PDF Toolkit+. It used to be $2, but it's currently free. It does not allow adjustable ratio, but has specific settings of 150 or 72 dpi.


Safe to clean iPad screen with alcohol wipe? I ordered a glass screen protector for my iPad and have just received it. In instructions, it says I have to clean the screen with the given alcohol wipe. Is it safe to use an alcohol wipe on iPad screen? I read somewhere it damages the screen...

Alcohol can probably damage the coating on the display. I wouldn't use an alcohol-based cleaner.

I accidentally used an alcohol-based liquid to clean my 2011 MBA's screen and the coating is visibly damaged by it.

See this Apple Support page: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204172.

Use baby wipes. It works cleans off fingerprints


Passcode lock for WhatsApp I am using an iPod touch 5 and I want to put a password on my WhatsApp, but the apps available on the App Store are not according to my need. Can you suggest some apps so that I can put a passcode on WhatsApp without jailbreaking?

Individual apps from the App Store can't be passcode protected in this way without jailbreaking which you mentioned you don't want to do. Restrictions are only available for pre-installed apps and features.

Instead, you can passcode the device, which will prevent access to the apps on the device, including WhatsApp. Go to Settings → Passcode to set it up.

I had the same problem. I used my login code both for my iphone 5 and my ipad and it worked fine. This is if you have downloaded the update and it asks you for a code and gives you a square for 4 letters. This is where you put in your log on code.


SIP preventing deletion of /opt/local Ran into the same problem tonight as this question from SO that wasn't fully answered.

I'm trying to uninstall an old installation of MacPorts, and run into SIP:

mybox:~ me$ sudo rm -rf /opt/local
rm: /opt/local/var/macports/home/Library/Preferences: Operation not permitted
rm: /opt/local/var/macports/home/Library: Operation not permitted
rm: /opt/local/var/macports/home: Operation not permitted
rm: /opt/local/var/macports: Directory not empty
rm: /opt/local/var: Directory not empty
rm: /opt/local: Directory not empty

According to the original question, the answer seems to involve SIP… but why has SIP decided to protect this (empty) directory?

EDIT: Here's the results of ls -a in the directory:

./ ../

And here's the results of ls -leOd /opt/local/var/macports/home/Library/Preferences:

drwxrwxrwx  2 root  wheel  - 64 Nov  8 19:45 /opt/local/var/macports/home/Library/Preferences/

.

EDIT 2018-11-12:

Here's the results of ls -laeO@ /opt/local/var/macports/home

drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  - 96 Nov  8 19:42 ./
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root  wheel  - 96 Nov  8 19:45 ../
    com.apple.FinderInfo    32
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  - 96 Nov  8 19:42 Library/

EDIT 2018-11-13:

Here's the results of xattr -l /opt/local/var/macports

com.apple.FinderInfo:
00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |........@.......|
00000010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000020

The directory is SIP-protected because it is the home directory for a macports user, presumably created as part of the MacPorts installation process.

The best solution is to first remove that user account, following the instructions in this accepted answer to another AppleSE question. You may also wish to remove the corresponding macports group that also exists.

Specifically, the following commands will remove the user and group:

sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -delete "/Users/macports"
sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -delete "/Groups/macports"

The MacPorts website uninstall page mentions deleting the user and group but does not note that it is necessary due to SIP-protection to do this before deleting the folders. I think they also have an error in the syntax of their dscl command.

Once you have done that, you should be able to sudo rm -rf /opt/local successfully.

Significant credit for this answer is due to @GordonDavisson for providing 90% of the solution in comments, some months ago.

Try one of the following

o You are not the owner of the directory

ls -ld /path/to/directory

o You do not have permissions to remove the directory name from the parent directory

o The directory or it's parent has an ACL that is preventing you from deleting the directory

ls -ldeO@ /path/to/directory

ls -ldeO@ /path/to/directory/..

chmod to mess with ACLs

o The directory or its parent has 'uchg' or 'schg' flag

ls -ldeO@ /path/to/directory

ls -ldeO@ /path/to/directory/..

chflags to mess with flags.

and finally this sudo chflags -R nouchg <parent>


Log out other user w/o first switching to that user My wife use separate accounts and quick user switching on a MBP running 10.6. Sometimes I want to log her out to free up some RAM, but I'd like to avoid logging in as her, logging out, then logging back in as me.

I have seen a terminal solution... is there a better way? Thanks!

Using the Terminal, you can kill her loginwindow process and any programs she has open will be closed... but this will cause her to lose any unsaved work she has! In fact, this is the very reason you need to log in as her to log out: When you log in as her, all her programs again have access to the GUI, so they can prompt you to confirm closure, save changes or take other action before logging out.

If you're sure that she only has things like a web browser, iTunes, etc open, not Pages, Word, Photoshop, or anything else with documents, then you could try from the terminal:

kill `ps awwwwux | grep her_short_username | grep loginwindow | grep -v grep | awk "{ print \$2 }"`

On OSX 10.10.4: (slight edit from last comment):

export pn=`ps awwwwux | awk '/her_short_username/ && /loginwind[o]w/ { print $2 }'`
sudo kill -9 $pn

In my opinion, the possible loss of data far outweights the possible gain in RAM.

Moreover, it has been a long time since Unix was able to swap memory to disk when a process was idle.


How do you type Theta on a Mac? I know option o comes out to ø? So I have been using that as my theta.

But I would love to know how to type Theta for a mac?

Γο το Συστεμ Πρεφερενψεσ/Λανγθαγε & Τεχτ/Ινπθτ Σοθρψεσ, σεαρψη φορ Γρεεκ, αδδ ιτ.
Νος υοθ μαυ τυπε θ φρομ κευβοαρδ.

   Go to System Preferences/Language & Text/Input Sources, search for Greek, add it. Now you may type u from keyboard.

Or you may just use Find and replace function in Edit menu to change ø to θ afterwards.

hold in alt(or option) and shift, then press O (the letter)


Don't Sleep Network Connection / VPN If I let my computer sleep my VPN connection seems to die. Mac shows it as still being up, but nothing over the VPN works until I reconnect and disconnect.

I am happy to have a my monitors sleep, but I want my network and VPN connection to stay active.

I'm running Yosemite with a wired connection. Anyone know how I might get this to happen? I'm open to using Caffeine or something like that, but with 3x 30 inch monitors my power bill will suck if I don't let them sleep (and turning them off is annoying because all my windows get rearranged).

Just put your displays to sleep in the energy saver settings (like in the picture below) and it should work.

Please check the answer at serverfault for the reason why the VPN-connections breaks.

There's another thread - and proposed solution that might apply: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5537854?start=0&tstart=0


Time & Location - High data usage iPhone 5s running iOS 8.0.2

I am on a 2GB/month plan so I tend to keep a close eye on cellular data usage. Recently noticed that Settings > Cellular > System Services > Time & Location was almost 300MB in about 20 days. In the past, I have never seen this more than 3-5MB. Checked a friend who has the same hardware & software and his usage has remained under 10MB/month.

What accounts for this high usage? I have background refresh turned off, Location Services enabled only for GPS apps (e.g. Waze cellular usage is around 30MB) and Find My Phone.

What exactly does "Time and Location" mean, which system components use this service and why has the usage shot up 100 times from 3MB to almost 300MB?

Thanks

I know this question is old, but I just found the the same happening for me.

First off, you can see when your location services are currently in use when a little North-East arrow appears on your status bar next to your battery.

One way to find out which apps are using location services, is to start closing apps one by one and checking when that arrow disappears.

A better way is to look at the Location Services settings Settings > Privacy > Location Services. Here you can see all the apps that have requested access to Location Services and also what permission they have been granted ("Never", "While Using" or "Always"). Best pay special attention to the apps that show "Always". This means they can use Location Services even when the app is not active. This screen will also show a purple North East arrow next to apps that are actively using Location Services right now.

If you don't want the offending apps to have access to Location Services you can change their access to "Never" or "While Using" to limit the damage. Note though that depending on the apps purpose it might stop performing as desired.

Me it did the same thing but i went on [settings->privacy->location services] it was on for all of the aps and if i was 5 minutes on my data it used 13mg! Try it out!


Learn about basic OS X applications I have been a Windows user and have recently started using OS X (I have Snow Leopard on my machine).

I wanted to learn about the basic applications in OS X (e.g. Terminal) and other commonly or some important utilities used in OS X. I know a lot of important apps come bundled or pre-installed with OS X, but I am not aware of a lot of them.

Could someone please point me as to where I can learn about such apps and what are the important apps which I should know about?

The Mac 101 on Apple website seems like a good place to start.

And of course, Ask Different.

I don't think there is some you "need" to know. Other than couple utility apps like Onyx and Stuffit Expander/ The Unarchiver everything depends on what you do. Also I use Sparrow over the default Mail app. For some reason it kept asking my passwords all the time so I just shut it down.Annoying indeed.

For knowing about new apps I would suggest twitter. Also app store is a good place to look for stuff.


Is there a way to hide, stack or collapse menubar icons? Right now I have far too many icons on my menubar. I know I can command drag them off of there. But I do need to use them on occasion. Is there any app that will combine menubar items into one such that I can click to drop down if I need to use any of those?

One example is my address book -> gmail address book sync. I don't actually need it in my menubar (it syncs periodically on its own). But when I remove it from the menubar, it stops syncing.

I'd even be happy with an app/script/tool that would leave it there but just hide it from me.

Mac Bartender

I've been struggling with this problem for quite some time as well and I think I've finally found a good solution.

I'm using Mac Bartender which is in free beta at the time of writing. The app has a lot of useful features for cleaning up an overflowing menubar.

For each menubar icon you can choose to:

Display it normally
Completely hide it
Display it in the menubar when Mac Bartender is activated
Display it in the Bartender Bar when Mac Bartender is activated

One thing to note is that it doesn't let you manage the built-in OSX 'menulets' (wifi, sound, spotlight, etc) yet, but that feature is coming according to their FAQ.

Messy Menubar

Clean Menubar

Bartender Bar

From the official site

  Take control of your Menu Bar

  With Bartender you can choose which apps stay in the Menu Bar, are
  displayed in Bartenders Bar or Hidden completely.

  Bartenders Bar

  Can be displayed and hidden as you want, by clicking on the Bartender
  Icon or via a hot key.

  Minimalism

  If you want a really clean look and privacy, Bartender can also be
  hidden.

  Menu Bar Apps still work the same

  Apps still work the same when they are in Bartenders Bar allowing you
  quick access to them when needed, but keep them out of sight when not.

  Bartenders Bar can be placed where you want

  Bartenders Bar can be moved at any time to any horizontal position
  immediately under the Menu Bar. Or it can open under the Bartender
  Menu Bar Icon.

  Show an App in the Menu Bar for 5 seconds when it updates

  Set up your Apps to be displayed in the Menu Bar for 5 seconds when
  they update.

  Hide Menu from left of Menu Bar to display maximum Menu Bar Apps

  Bartender can remove the left hand side Menu temporarily to display
  the maximum possible Menu Bar Apps in the Menu Bar.

Sorry, the answer is unfortunately, no there is not.

Menulets come and go under normal working conditions, some are there 100% of the time and some only show when they are running.

But I've looked in the past and again today, I cannot see any Menu Bar customisation that works on the menulets.


Where has the SearchMe extension for Safari and Chrome come from? Again, today, I found out that my default search engine has been changed to "Yahoo", which is weird as I didn't do that.

This is the second time it happens, and I found out there is an extension named "search me" is installed both in safari and chrome. Where is this stupid plugin comes from?  I don't remember I install it.

Some other guys also have this issue: Apple Support Communities thread

The current versions of uTorrent and bitTorrent, as of July 2013, bundle the SearchMe extension in their package installers.

Shady.

Open Safari Preferences, under the Safari menu, and go to the Extensions panel. If you see anything there you didn't install or don't want, there is an Uninstall button.

That doesn't explain how it got there, but ...

You can further check on this by going to ~/Library/Safari/Extensions and examining that folder's contents.


How can I type "\" (backslash) via remote desktop with a Norwegian, Danish or Swedish keyboard? I am running Remote Desktop to connect from my MacBook Air with Yosemite to a Windows computer running Windows 8.1.

Both my Mac and the Windows computer is configured with Norwegian keyboard layout.
It seems "\" backslash is impossible to input in this keyboard configuration. I would guess it's the same for Danish and Swedish keyboards.

Is there a way to easily input this character in RDP for Mac using this keyboard layout?

(I would be willing to map some key combination if that's possible, but I don't want to switch to some other keyboard layout, since I need to input Norwegian characters now and then)

The problem was actually a bug in Remote Desktop for OS X, and has been fixed in 8.0.15, which was released a few days ago. Now the keyboard works completely as expected with both my Mac and the Windows computer configured with Norwegian keyboard layout.

ctrl-alt-+ works for me, Swedish keyboard


Windows 8.1 poor sound quality I installed Windows 8.1 on my MacBook Pro 13 (2011 late) using Bootcamp and everything seems ok except poor sound quality. It is just so impossible to listen to music. The quality is like a radio or telephone. On the other hand on the Mac OS X the sound is pretty good.

Windows built-in tool for driver updates says that my drivers are up to date...

Is there any suggestions how to fix the sound on the Windows? I just really don't want to switch on Mac OS every time I want to listen to music.

Thank you!

The Windows 8.1 and the drivers of bootcamp may interfere with each other.

As Windows 8.1 is not yet officially released I would say that bootcamp isn't yet fully compatible with Windows 8.1

Though this link might help: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1_pr-hardware/audio-lost-after-installing-windows-81-preview-on/7033e0ac-ba83-4395-afdf-9a312dbb3d99


Autocomplete not working in Terminal local to folder When I go into any folder via cd and then press tab a whole list of options is displayed. How do I make the autocomplete local to the folder?

If you want to see only binaries in the current folder, press ./tab (dot slash tab).

If you want to see all folders in the current folder, press cd tab

In your screenshot, pressingm tab is showing all binaries that start with m found in the path.

In all cases, pressing tab a second time will show all matches if there are more than one.

You're looking for bash-completion. This post describes how to get it (tl;dr - for an easy install you'll need a package manager like Homebrew or MacPorts) for example:

brew install bash_completion

With bash-completion, typing cd and then Tab the results you get should be limited to folders.

Out-of-the-box bash-completion covers a wide range of possible completions, but there may be more - check your package manager. For example, on Homebrew try this:

brew search completions

This returns additional completions for macOS tools like open and launchctl, virtualisation tools like docker and vagrant, and many others.

You can create your own completions, for example I use this one to show me only .png files for a script (png2icns) I hacked together.

complete -f -X '!*.png' png2icns

However this really isn't necessary for most cases - bash-completion will cover all the common uses.

For completeness I need to mention that fans of the zsh shell will no doubt tell you that zsh's support for completion is far superior to bash's! Personally, bash does what I need, albeit with a little help from brew.


How to uninstall P-150M driver? I have 10.8.4 OS X and the Canon P-150M scanner does not work with it. Yet my friend has an older iMac where it works. I want to try the new driver and test whether things start working. So how can I remove a driver in OS X?

For scanning with a P-150 on OS X 10.9 Mavericks:

Turn OFF the autostart under the scanner.
Disconnect the 2 USB cables and reconnect.

It should work correctly now.


How to auto switch input method by app My mac has several input methods (English, Chinese)

When I open terminal / iterm2 , I want the input method to switch to English  automatically.

When I open skype or chat messenger , I want the input method to switch to Chinese automatically.

I have the same problem and solve it by the following approach.

  choose System Preferences
  select the Keyboard option
  Select the Input Sources tab, and then check the box next to Automatically switch to a document’s input source option

Source: https://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/53194/os-x-switch-language-input-sources-automatically/

Try this: GhostSKB

You guys really need to try it yourself, then come back to vote or de-vote this answer


rEFInd not showing macOS partition, just Ubuntu A week ago I installed Ubuntu gnome in dual boot on my MacBook Pro mid 2012 (macOS Sierra). I followed the installation guide, disabled SIP in Recovery Mode, installed rEFInd and everything went well.

Today I wanted to go back to macOS and when I rebooted the system rEFInd did not show up, instead there was just Ubuntu loading. So I booted to Recovery Mode and reinstalled rEFInd (from that console I was able to locate my macOS files).

After rebooting I was able to load rEFInd page, but I cannot find the macOS "icon" to boot the system, just the Ubuntu one. Any hint on what may be the problem?


How to restore to Leopard/Snow Leopard from Lion without any disk? My friend has a Mid 2010 Macbook pro with Mac OS X Lion installed on it. She wants to restore it (as in format/erase and get a fresh start). However she does not have any disks.

When trying to restore using the CMD+R option during the boot process she is asked to sign in with her account but then a message saying she does not have OS X Lion purchased under her account prevents her from continuing with the installation. Is there a way to buy this online so she can proceed?

Also, she has the Recovery Partition in her HD so going back to Leopard/Snow Leopard is also an option. Is it possible? How?

Any hints on how to proceed without having to get an actual physical media is appreciated.

Thanks

There are two possible solutions from my limited knowledge:
First method
Install the OS X Recovery Disc Assistant on a USB drive and reinstall Lion.
From the OS X Recovery Disc Assistant guide:

To create an external OS X Recovery, download the OS X Recovery Disk Assistant application. Insert an external drive, launch the OS X  Recovery Disk Assistant,  select the drive where you would like to install, and follow the on screen instructions.
When the OS X Recovery Disk Assistant completes, the new partition will not be visible in the Finder or Disk Utility. To access OS X Recovery, reboot the computer while holding the Option key. Select Recovery HD from the Startup Manager.

If her Recovery partition won't let you install already, I'm guessing there's a chance this might fail, but it's a least free to test and see.
Second method
Buy OSX Lion from Apple.
OS X Lion is still sold by Apple, so you could just buy a new disc and install using it.

Once you have upgraded your Macintosh's operating system there is no going back without already owning an official CD or a backup of the operating system available.

You are going to have to buy a complete new CD from the shops as said above are quite cheap so you may want to consider checking your local store.

Also I am running on a Late-2009 iMac so your friend running a 2010 model MacBook Pro should be able to upgrade to OS X 10.9 Mavericks for free from the App Store which is even better than Lion.


How to automate audio editing? I want to make audio editing workflows in Automator. My current goal: to cut out exactly the same length from a group of audio files.

I haven't found any audio editors supporting AppleScript yet. Other kinds of scripts/solutions are also welcome.

Install Homebrew, run brew install ffmpeg, and then run something like

cd ~/containing/folder;for f in *.aif;do /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i "$f" -ss 0:12:34 -t 0:0:5 -c copy "${f%.aif}-clip.aif";done

where -ss 0:12:34 is the starting position and -t 0:0:5 is the duration.

MYRIAD Worth a Play…

Apple Script enables and VERY slick


Is there an app that will let me edit track information (title/artist)? I wonder if is there any app for the iOS 5 that will let me edit the artist or title of my music?

The music is currently synced through iTunes and stored in the music app, but please let me know if there are any alternatives. I am open to jail breaking the device if there are no other alternatives.

Given the rather strict sandboxing applied in iOS this is most probably impossible to achieve without jailbraking the device.

YouTubetoMp3 - allows you to name artist, album, etc. metadata and then import to library, even if one already exists.


Will I lose my game saves when I upgrade to iOS 5? I have heard that if I update my iPhone to iOS5 it will take all of the apps off of my phone and I will have to manually put them back on. Does that mean I will lose any savegames or game progress in the games I have on my iPhone?

The short answer to your question is no. You will not lose your games. However, you must know how to save them and how to bring them back after upgrading to iOS 5. A friend of mine with an iPod Touch had the same concerns about his saved Angry Birds data. I walked him thru upgrading to iOS 5 and this is how we did it:

Using iTunes and an USB cable, we backed up the iPod Touch. Make sure you are running the latest version of iTunes (10.5 as of this writing).
We upgraded to iOS 5 from the Summary tab for his device.
Once iOS 5 starts, on the initial setup screens (in the iPod Touch itself), we told the iPod Touch to restore from a backup in iTunes.
We continued the rest of the set up as normal. We used his Apple ID to create an iCloud account. I highly recommend using iCloud.
Once you're done with the initial setup, you can go to your device in iTunes and check on "Use Wi-Fi syncing for this device". You can detach the USB cable for good--This is one of my favorite features of iOS 5.
In the iPod Touch, we went to Settings > iCloud > Backup and Storage to tell iCloud to backup this device. You can then manually trigger your first backup from that screen.
Once backup is completed, your device will show up on this same screen as backed up. You can tap on its name to go to another screen where you can individually set which apps you want to keep in and out of your iCloud backup. This is very handy when deciding how to use your iCloud storage space. Most apps take very little space on the server, but there may be some apps that not, so it is worth to take a peek. This screen tells you exactly how much each app is using. Make sure to add all of your games that have data that you wish to back up.

Next time you need to restore your device, iCloud will restore all of your saved games this way over the air, rather than having to restore from iTunes with a USB cable. Hope this helps.

I just upgraded to iOS5 last night and all of my apps, with their data, along with all my music, photos, videos, and the like were all restored. I will say that the content restoration process is a choice automatically presented to you that can opt out of. The process takes a while—I have a very full 32GB iPhone—and the whole process took a few hours including the time backing up and restoring. Just pay careful attention to all of the dialog windows presented and you should be up and running in no time.

There is, however, a backend feature change for the OS that developers need to manage that might affect your data. The caches where apps can store temporary data will get cleaned automatically upon a lack of space on the iPhone. A lot of apps store their data in caches as opposed to Documents, but not all of them. If an app developer uses the cache folder and doesn't do something about this automatic cache cleaning on the part of the OS, then, yes, there is a possibility that you will lose your data like game saves. But, just to make very clear, it all depends on how the app was programmed by the developer. There is nothing about the cleaning the developer can do, but you can by making sure you don't completely fill up your device.

You can read about this cache-cleaning issue in detail here: http://www.marco.org/2011/10/13/ios5-caches-cleaning


Software to clone / recover data from almost dead ssd on MBP MPB 15 2011 with Sierra on an ssd.

ssd is almost dead, Mac OS (Sierra) isn't loading with a folder with question mark showing on boot. The drive is detected in bios though, which gives me hope :)

I've taken it out of mac, connected to a regular pc & checked with mhdd & it shows dead & unrecoverable sectors on it.

Disk utility from mac internet recovery isn't showing any partitions on the drive & cannot make an image because of input/output error.

So I've googled & installed "Data Rescue 4" https://www.prosofteng.com/data-rescue-recovery-software on another MBP & made a bootable rescue usb to try to recover data, but this thing isn't working properly :(

Is there anything else I could use? I'd like to boot from smth which I can put on a usb with f.e. Rufus & either recover data to another usb hdd or make a sector by sector clone of an ssd drive with an option to skip dead/unreadable sectors to work on it on another machine.

Please recommend smth you tested & works well with Macs.

Thanks!

The best way to recover is to restore from your backup. Assuming you don't have a backup, you could try Disk Warrior, as I've found it tends to work well. Although damaged SSDs are trickier than hard drives, it may work.

You can also try Stellar Mac Data Recovery, another paid solution. I've used the latest version 7 with good results.


Uninstall Java Mountain Lion How do I completely uninstall Java from Mountain Lion?

I wanted to run Minecraft so I followed the system promps and I think I installed Java 7 and then Java 6. I couldn't get Mincraft to work for other reasons so I deleted it and now I want to get rid of Java.

Not sure if it's relevant but typing "java -version" into Terminal gives me
"java version "1.6.0_37"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_37-b06-434-11M3909)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.12-b01-434, mixed mode)"

Any help would be appreciated.

Apple provides an automatic Java installer but no uninstaller so you can't remove Java once you've installed it without using an at-your-own-risk approach.

That being said this is how to get rid of java from a terminal session and a using a text editor:

sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/
sudo rm -rf /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/*.jdk
sudo rm -rf /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin
sudo rm -rf /Library/PreferencePanes/JavaControlPanel.prefpane
sudo rm -rf /private/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.JavaEssentials.bom
sudo rm -rf /private/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.JavaEssentials.plist
sudo rm -rf /private/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.JavaForMacOSX107.bom
sudo rm -rf /private/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.JavaForMacOSX107.plist
sudo rm -rf /private/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.JavaMDNS.bom
sudo rm -rf /private/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.JavaMDNS.plist
sudo rm -rf /private/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.JavaSecurity.bom
sudo rm -rf /private/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.JavaSecurity.plist

At this point you need to edit the installation history to delete evidence you installed Java.  I suggest backing up the file first.  If you prefer a different text editor feel free to use it but do not use a word processor that puts formatting codes in the text file.

sudo cp /Library/Receipts/InstallHistory.plist ~/Desktop
sudo emacs /Library/Receipts/InstallHistory.plist

Search for entries that look like:

    <dict>
            <key>date</key>
            <date>2011-09-16T22:22:10Z</date>
            <key>displayName</key>
            <string>Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 5</string>
            <key>displayVersion</key>
            <string>1.0</string>
            <key>packageIdentifiers</key>
            <array>
                    <string>com.apple.pkg.JavaForMacOSX10.6Update5</string>
            </array>
            <key>processName</key>
            <string>Software Update</string>
    </dict>

also

    <dict>
            <key>date</key>
            <date>2013-01-15T11:42:35Z</date>
            <key>displayName</key>
            <string>Java for OS X 2012-006</string>
            <key>displayVersion</key>
            <string>1.0</string>
            <key>packageIdentifiers</key>
            <array>
                    <string>com.apple.pkg.JavaEssentials</string>
                    <string>com.apple.pkg.JavaForMacOSX107</string>
                    <string>com.apple.pkg.JavaSecurity</string>
                    <string>com.apple.pkg.JavaMDNS</string>
            </array>
            <key>processName</key>
            <string>Software Update</string>
    </dict>

and delete them.  You may wish to check your work using diff:

diff -u ~/Desktop/InstallHistory.plist /Library/Receipts/InstallHistory.plist | less

or some other file comparison tool.

You can test that java is gone by running:

java -version

You should see a pop up asking to install Java again.

According to Oracle's Doc:

Uninstalling the JDK
To uninstall the JDK, you must have Administrator privileges and execute the remove command either as root or by using the sudo(8) tool.
Navigate to /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines and remove the directory whose name matches the following format:
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdkmajor.minor.macro[_update].jdk

For example, to uninstall 8u6:
% rm -rf jdk1.8.0_06.jdk

Do not attempt to uninstall Java by removing the Java tools from /usr/bin. This directory is part of the system software and any changes will be reset by Apple the next time you perform an update of the OS.

You can review this at:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/install/mac_jdk.html#A1096903