How to get music from Dropbox to ANY mp3 music type app I am using an iphone 6, first time with an iphone, not really fond of it unfortunately bought it for the slow-mo video but having a heck of a time getting my music transferred!

I don't want to live stream it, I want the music saved on my iphone. Trying to transfer from a Linux system computer (that was a whole lot of fun) finally figured that out using the dropbox app, but how to get the music from dropbox to an app that I can make playlists and NOT stream as I don't have unlimited data or wifi available ( I know stone age right?)! There has got to be an answer. Don't want to pay for all the music I had on my android device before switching to (cough.. a phone known for music abilities)... help appreciated! (as user friendly as possible I am tec illiterate, sorry.)

It's really not possible to get music from Dropbox into the music app on your iPhone. Apple does not support getting music onto your iPhone that way. The Dropbox app will play the songs but is hardly a music playing app.

You mention Linux. Do you have a Mac or a Windows PC? The best way is to add the songs to iTunes on a Mac or Windows PC and then sync your files using iTunes. Apple does not make iTunes for Linux and iTunes is the only supported way to get music from your computer onto your iPhone.

Not being a Linux guy there may be a Linux application that will get the music onto your iPhone without iTunes. Maybe there is a Linux guy here that knows if there is such a thing. I don't know, sorry.

Apple is all about making it simple to do basic things for the majority of people. Those of us at the geeky/nerdy end of the spectrum often face these frustrations. You can either continue to be frustrated, or just relax and do it the Apple way, using Apple software. There are a number of things that have always annoyed me about Apple software and Macs (+ iPhones...) in general. But I have learned to accept the limitations because I don't like Windows and Linux just annoys me. But that is just me, you have to do what works for you.

You can try to use the Online Playlist service. They have a demo.

This is Online Dropbox player, it works with any Web-browser, even with iPhone Safari! Just upload your mp3/ogg to your DB account and enjoy it via this player.

No additional software, no files synchronization with Dropbox.

That's it!


How can I find Bottom Rubber Feet Foot For MacBook Pro 15" A1398？ How can I find Bottom Rubber Feet Foot For MacBook Pro 15" A1398？

I searched Amazon.com and ebay.com, can not find this model.

Apple actually has an article specifically about this, right here.  Apparently they have a rubber foot replacement kit which you can get if you contact them and request it.

Personally I would just find some soft-side velcro, felt, or some other craft material, cut out a few small circles with an xacto-knife, glue it on with Loctite (which is what Apple uses according to their article above) and call it a day.

If it really bugs you and you want someone else to cut out the little circles for you..

http://www.powerbookmedic.com/Macbook-Unibody-Feet-Replacement-Set-Black-p-23146.html

http://macdudu.en.alibaba.com/product/742059651-218052561/Rubber_Case_Foot_Feet_for_Macbook_Pro_retina_15_A1398.html

Look at this eBay link here:  http://www.ebay.com/itm/181701854491?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1558.l2649

I hope it helps.


Scanning a ton of pictures I'm rather disappointed that iPhoto has no direct ability to import from a scanner. I'm reduced to scanning in Preview, which has a less awful UI for scanning than the program that came with my HP scanner, and dragging the resulting files into iPhoto.

Is there some better scheme that I've missed?

Send the photos to a scanning service, especially if you have "tons".


Is there an OS X equivalent to iOS's Remote App? Is there some equivalent to Apple's (iOS) Remote App for the desktop (running OS X)? I.e. some – preferably small – application to control an iTunes instance which is running on another Mac? Maybe some menu extra?

I know there are several "iTunes controllers" (like Coversutra). But does any of them support a remotely running iTunes?

(N.B.: I'm aware of e.g. Home Sharing, but I want the remote Mac to keep running and output the music, not the controlling one. I'm also aware of Screen Sharing, but I'm looking for a quicker/easier solution.)

iTunes Remote Control is probably the easiest, but is no longer updated, and I've heard reports of some issues with it under Snow Leopard. YMMV.

Edit: One other major option would be to control iTunes from your browser. A variety of commercial and free solutions exist to do this. This is one of the more popular DIY guides on the subject. Playerpal and PatioTunes are two examples of commercial variants on the idea. N.B., I've used neither, and can't speak to the quality of either app. Feel free to google around for more options on this front.

TuneConnect might be another option, it's no longer actively maintained though (so compatibility with newer versions of OS X/iTunes might be an issue):

  The TuneConnect Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of TuneConnect 2.0, the latest reinvention of our revolutionary iTunes remote control software for Mac OS X. Featuring speed-of-light music browsing and full-featured controls, TuneConnect 2 is a complete rewrite of the old TuneConnect. Control your music simply, quickly, and easily, from anywhere on your network: welcome to life with TuneConnect.


How can I install both Windows 7 and Windows 8 on a Mac Mini 2012? I'm a developer, and I'm working on a cross-platform app that have to run on Mac OS X, Win7 and Win8. Unfortunately it's impossible to test my app in VM due to some hardware restrictions, so I have to install all of them on bare hardware.

I've bought Mac Mini 2012, but unfortunately I cannot find out how to install all 3 OSes on it. Boot Camp only allows to install single instance of Windows.

Is it even possible to have Mac OS X, Win7 and Win8 on the machine (with and without Boot Camp)?

I have done this myself. First install REFIt, an utility for dual/triple booting. It adds a useful selection of OSes on startup. It also includes a EFI/MBR fixing tool which is very useful. You might need to restart 2 times. Using the Disk Utility, add 2 more partitions to your disk. Format them FAT or FAT32. Restart your machine, and this time, assuming you have installed REFIt, instead of choosing OS X, navigate to the partition inspector (the hard drive icon). Just apply the settings it suggests.

Reboot your mac and put the windows 8 disc in. The setup will allow you to format the partitions. Format both of the partitions. Install to the first partition. After installing drivers (optional) etc on win8, restart and install win7 to the other partition.

Sometimes the Win8 will find Win7 installed and integrate the bootloader. That means that in REFIt, choosing either one of Win7/Win8 won't boot. Choosing Win7/Win8 from REFIt will give you the option to boot Win7 or Win8. Hope this helps.

NB: Your Windows partitions won't be named. REFIt won't know which is win7/win8. Or you can name it when you've installed the first Windows.

Parallels works great for this! I have multiple Linux distro's, Windows 7 and Windows 8 installed AND you can even run Windows software without actually being in the Windows environment, which I love!


How to Screen Sharing / VNC to an iMac without waking the display? I have an iMac mid 2011 at home. When I was not home, I may need to access my mac with Screen Sharing. However the iMac display will turn itself on when I connect via Screen Sharing. The problem is I don't want to scare my family at home (with the elders and kids) as the iMac "turn itself on suddenly".

This is a problem specific for iMac. On MacBooks (Pro, Air, whatever) I can set the brightness to the lowest setting so the screen is black (i.e. the LED light is off). However on an iMac you cannot turn off the LED backlit by setting brightness. The display is still bright and everything is clearly visible even on lowest brightness setting.

Therefore these solution are not working as the display will turn on as soon as you move your mouse or hit any key on the keyboard via Screen Sharing.

Sleep Display (by Ctrl+Shift+Eject)
Using the code listed on http://pastebin.com/8CMaxGeP

Question:
Is the a way to keep the iMac display off entirely while you accessing it with Screen Sharing?

OS X Lion added per-user screen sharing: the ability to have multiple remote desktop sessions active on a single Mac at the same time. It's not a perfect solution, but you may find it good enough for your case.

When you connect to your Mac via Screen Sharing make sure the session is in Control Mode, not View Mode. You can switch modes by pressing Cmd+Option+X in the Screen Sharing app.

Once in Control Mode, look under the View menu and you should see an entry that says "Switch to Virtual Display". Select that to change the session to a virtual display, not the current desktop display, and log in as yourself.

The main display on your iMac should go to sleep according to your screen saver and energy settings once you've disconnected your remote session from the physical display and moved it to a virtual display.

The only flaw in this approach is I know of no way to start Screen Sharing on a virtual display from the get go. So the initial connect always wakes up the physical display.

Update for Mavericks

The "Switch to Virtual Display" option in the Screen Sharing app went away in Mavericks. Instead, upon connecting to the other Mac with Screen Sharing:

  If someone else is already connected to the Mac as a remote user, a dialog asks if you
  want to share the display with the other remote user (Share Display), or log in
  concurrently using a different user name and screen (Log In). Choose the option you
  want.

  If you choose Log In, you will share the Mac with the other remote user, but you won’t share the same screen.

Here's an example. In this case I tried to connect a Screen Sharing session from my iMac to my wife's MacBook Pro where she was already logged in. This is the dialog I get when trying to connect:

Instead of turning the computer off, or putting it in sleep mode, you could consider just turning the display off.

There is a key combination that you can use to turn the screen off which is: ctrl + shift + eject.


Microsoft Word right-to-left (RTL) support I have on my Mac - Microsoft Word 2010, now … I want to write from right to left ( not only text-align right, but direction ltr).

I'll be thankful for some help. :)

Word 2016 has this language feature if you can upgrade Word.

There's no right-to-left support for Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac presently. There are several alternative word processors that do support RTL, however:

OpenOffice
Mellel
Nisus Writer Pro

Nevron Writer for MAC has RTL support though its not perfect - https://www.nevronoffice.com/


re-mount ejected SD card without reinserting I use a microSD card in my macbook air for additional storage, using a flush adapter (homemade, similar to the nifty minidrive).

To save battery when I'm not using it, I disabled auto-mount using /etc/fstab.
But sometimes, I accidentally eject it instead of unmounting (because that's what the finder gui does).

After it's ejected, the only way I know to remount is to take the card adapter out and put it back in. Since it's flush, I need a paperclip to take it out.

So I need a way to re-enable the card reader without having to re-insert.

In Windows, this is possible using the devcon command-line tool from microsoft, or going to device manager, disabling and enabling the card reader.

There has to be a way to do this, so please don't answer just saying it's not possible.

Thanks

On Mountain Lion with built-in SD readers:

sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleSDXC
sudo kextload -b com.apple.driver.AppleSDXC

Probably the best solution I've seen on the web:

Unmounting an attached hard drive

diskutil unmount /dev/disk2s1

Volume VM Drive on disk2s1 unmounted

Note how we use the unmount command. We need to specify the location of the partition with its full path (i.e. /dev/disk2s1).

Mounting an attached hard drive.
To mount the drive again, without having to take it out and plugging it in again, I can issue this command:

diskutil mount /dev/disk2s1

Volume VM Drive on /dev/disk2s1 mounted

credits


Replacing Macbook Pro SSD with Macbook Air SSD Currently I have a Macbook Pro (mid 2014) with 120GB ssd. I am planning to buy a Macbook Air (say, early 2015) with 250GB ssd and swap these drives between laptops. I know they are both PCI based, but that doesn't mean much
as the protocol could be SATA/NVM/Proprietary.

My concerns are:
1. Will it work?
2. Should I expect significant performance differences between these drives?

I checked compatible drives for both laptops on ifixit:
https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Parts/MacBook-Air-11-Inch-and-13-Inch-Mid-2013-to-Early-2015-and-MacBook-Pro-Retina-13-Inch-and-15-Inch-2015-SSD/IF188-105-5 Air

https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Parts/MacBook-Pro-13-Inch-and-15-Inch-Retina-Late-2013-Mid-2014-SSD/IF123-026 Pro

I see that Air's SSD is compatible with Air models from 2013 to 2015, but with Pro models only of 2015 -- that seems weird and I expect that it's just a misleading description. Does anyone have such (successful or not) experience?

I agree with Matthew.
MBA early 2015 connector PCLE 8GT/s
MBP mid 2014 connector PCLE 5GT/s.
I suppose it can be done, but I would not do it at all.
You have to reinstall everything including the EFi and RecoveryPartitions, otherwise it will not work at all.


How do I download an iOS App (IPA) file to my Mac after iTunes 12.7 update? Now that Apple has removed the ability to access the iOS App Store in iTunes 12.7 on Mac/Windows (See MacRumors article), I can't find any way to download an IPA file from the App Store. As a note, I'm not worried about installing the IPA files (see "How do I backup and restore my IPA app backups in iTunes 12.7?"), I just need the IPA files as a developer looking for some basic information on the apps. I'd like to solve this without resorting to jailbreaking as my devices are already updated to iOS 10.3.3.

Here are things that I've tried that didn't work:

Extract from backup: The apps seem no longer to be backed up.
Save to Mac from iPhone management software: I believe this has been blocked by Apple works as far back as iOS 8.3.
Figuring out how the file is downloaded via proxy connection: At least for me, this looks too complicated to do because you have to authenticate with your Apple ID and I'm sure that by now, Apple even requires the phone to be authenticated in some way. Not sure if it would even be possible in the same way that you see all those Android APK download services out there.

At least for now, it looks to me like maybe the only way is to hold onto an older version of iTunes for as long as that works.

This isn’t exactly what you want, but just to add this option too...

If you use the "Apple Configurator 2" app, you can still download and update apps from multiple Apple IDs - as you also could with iTunes.

Connect the device with USB
Sign in under Account:

Choose Update in the menu:

A more detailed description can be found here: http://krypted.com/apple-configurator/upgrade-devices-and-apps-using-apple-configurator-2/

The Apps are downloaded to:

~/Library/Group\ Containers/K36BKF7T3D.group.com.apple.configurator/Library/Caches/Assets/TemporaryItems/MobileApps/

Seems the new way to do it is to open iTunes, then drag the .ipa file onto the device in the list on the left hand side (between Library and Playlists).


Microsoft Word Forcing "Spaces" Switching When I have Microsoft Word on one “space” (virtual desktop in usual english), sometimes clicking anything on another “space” forces me to go back to the "space" where the Word window is opened. How can I prevent Word from behaving this way?

Note: This is a blind answer attempt: I don't have Microsoft Office on any of my computers.

Could you try:

System Preferences
    Mission Control

to deactivate:

    ☐ Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use
    ☐ When switching to an application, switch to a space with open
               windows for the application

I deactivated both because they were always disturbing my working environment in a way I wasn't able to go ahead with what I was running in parallel on many spaces.
Since I made this setting I'm able to work with an environment not running under my feet.

One key issue I find with this is that in many cases, the spacing is actually not happening, you are getting the results of a justification issue. If you go into Microsoft Word, then click on the Word item, top left, and then open preferences (this would normally be "options" on a Windows machine) go to Display or View. This area will show you items you can list as visible in word when you work. Check the box for "show spacing" and you will then notice a tiny pip like mark between words in your word doc.

If you are in fact getting double spacing, it will show as two pips, and you will be able to identify if it is a keyboard issue, or if it is something else. If there is only ONE pip every time, then try left justifying the text, and it will compress that spacing down to be uniform instead of being spread out.

Sorry if I didn't get the names of the menu items above correct, my Macbook Pro happens to be in for repair, so couldn't double check on my machine.


get working gdb on macOS Big Sur How to get gdb working on macOS Big Sur?
The gdb from brew install gdb doesn't work (nothing counts as an executable somehow), and all the tutorials I find online are years old

brew install gdb seems to successfully install gdb.  Did you get a error message when running brew install gdb?


Launch specific device simulator How can I launch the device simulator on a Mac and specify which specific device I want, for example an iPhone 6s or an iPhone X, without having to launch Xcode (which takes forever on my old Mac)?

You can use simctl command from xcrun. Here's how to do it:

$ xcrun simctl list

Sample output:

(...)
== Devices ==
-- iOS 12.2 --
    iPhone X (AC5DA9BB-2198-4E6B-9CFC-A407730FF853) (Shutdown)
    iPhone Xs (69A34565-5621-419C-8F37-3089FEFA52C1) (Shutdown)
    iPhone Xs Max (8192F2B2-3F3F-49C1-AC36-D88550D48FCA) (Shutdown)
(...)

The string in braces is UUID of the simulator device.

Boot the device with:

$ xcrun simctl boot $UUID

Now launch the simulator with:

$ open /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Applications/Simulator.app/

If you do not need to switch the Simulator type, just run the last command.

More info about simctl and how to use it see the NSHipster article.

Here's one way (with two variations) to do what you want:

Begin by using Terminal to open the iOS Simulator.app's enclosing folder:

cd /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Applications/; open .

Now you need to make a choice. If you use the Simulator often enough to keep its icon in the Dock, then go ahead and drag it in. If not, your other choice right click on the app's icon and select Make Alias, then drag the alias into the "Applications" directory.

All done in twenty seconds, and welcome to Ask Different!


Is it possible to ditch OS X and install BSD on my 3rd Gen Macbook Pro I would like to run BSD on Mac hardware. I'm unable to locate a version of BSD that runs on any MacBook Pro.

I'd like a native install, replacing OS X entirely and not doing a Boot Camp setup or virtualizing over another OS.

Of course it's possible: Your Mac is just a generic Intel machine (albeit one running EFI instead of a traditional BIOS unless you set up BootCamp). Grab your favorite BSD install CD, stick it in the drive, and have fun.1
1 - Because Apple is deprecating the optical disk you may have to make a USB install stick, or plug in an external CD/DVD drive.

Most of the hardware should work "out of the box", but you'll probably need to do some tuning. The FreeBSD folks have a somewhat outdated Wiki page with information on getting FeeBSD running on a MacBook, either under BootCamp or as the only OS on the machine.

I do have to object to calling OS X "Nothing more than a watered-down version of BSD" though. First off, it's Mach under the hood (the kernel) - they just borrowed the userland utilities from FreeBSD, and they've diverged pretty far since OS X 10.0.0 ; Second it's goal isn't to be a Unix development platform - it's a workstation.

Personally I find doing (unix) development on a Mac painful, and I wouldn't recommend it for serious, down in the muck unix programming, but as a workstation it's quite adequate (and you're not going to get a GUI like that from any of the open-source *nix systems without spending a pretty substantial amount of time working on it).
The amount of work required to get a useful desktop/workstation with any of the open-source *nix systems is substantial compared to running OS X. If you need a BSD (or Linux, Windows, etc.) environment any of the desktop virtualization programs can be used to run it on your Mac, while retaining OS X as the primary operating system.

You should also bear in mind that despite what some of us consider questionable design choices (I want to bludgeon the people who came up with the lousy disk I/O scheduling in OS X) Apple builds OS X to run on their hardware. It's about as optimized as you can get, and much like the Star Trek franchise, Even-Numbered OS X releases (10.2, 10.4, 10.6, 10.8) are pretty good.

So bottom line?

Yes, you can do it. No, I wouldn't personally recommend it.
There aren't enough benefits, and you lose a lot of functionality (or have to spend your time making things work, rather than being productive).

Yes it is a simple process for me. I jun ubuntu studio  and am looking to run bsd  on it. The power supply using the battery it drains faster then os X

I use rEEInd then my os of choice. I left mac on but never use it.


How do I stop the Adobe Creative Cloud app from auto-launching on login? How do I stop the Adobe Creative Cloud app from auto-launching on login? I don't see any option of stopping this, and for some reason it's not in OS X's user login options.

It is loaded by default by /Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud.plist.

If you run

launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud.plist

that will disable it for your user.

To turn it back on

launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud.plist

I'm currently using this set of commands—the wildcard answer will be a bit more future-proof if Adobe adds more services, but:

Apple is shifting to having these services embedded inside app bundles, so new services added by Adobe may not appear in the usual /Library/Launch*/ paths but still have the same infuriating launch-at-login behavior and
this answer lets you target a single user (if you have multiple users on your machine) for the Creative Cloud UI and sync daemon, should you wish to leave them in place for another person.

sudo launchctl disable system/com.adobe.acc.installer.v2
sudo launchctl disable system/com.adobe.acc.installer
sudo launchctl disable system/Adobe_Genuine_Software_Integrity_Service
sudo launchctl disable system/com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud
sudo launchctl disable system/com.adobe.agsservice
launchctl disable gui/$(id -u)/com.adobe.acc.AdobeCreativeCloud.2416
launchctl disable gui/$(id -u)/com.adobe.accmac.2256
launchctl disable gui/$(id -u)/com.adobe.CCXProcess.2252
launchctl disable gui/$(id -u)/com.adobe.CreativeCloud
launchctl disable gui/$(id -u)/com.adobe.CCLibrary.4032
launchctl disable gui/$(id -u)/com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud


Keynote transition delay time for each slide I am working with Keynote for the first time to create a slideshow.  I have a slideshow with just over 200 slides in it and I need the last 2 slides (one of which is a short 20 second video clip) to show for longer than the rest, which show 7.5 seconds.  How do you customize single slides to stay longer before they transition without changing the entire slideshow?

I am using Keynote Version 6.2
Software is OS X Version 10.9.5

In the Animate inspector tab you will find all the settings to easily change transition timing. You can do so for each slide or for the entire slideshow. In the movie inspector you can view the movie length then change your slide transition accordingly.
I encourage you to explore the user interface. Create a new slideshow just to play with. Then start clicking buttons and menu items. See what stuff does. Just like driving a new car, new software can take a little getting used to but in the long run, a little time invested will pay off. Cheers.


How do I browse files in my `.backupbundle` backup? I am currently trying to access my Time Machine backups manually, because the Time Machine feature was a little to slow for me and I needed the finder search. Before Catalina this was possible with the .sparsebundle but since then not longer. Every time I double-click the .backupbundle it says "This resource is currently not available".

I wonder if there is a way to mount/open this file to browse my backups. I read that renaming it to .sparsebundle would work but I don't want to destroy my backups – we all know that macOS sometimes do things different from expected ^^.

My Backup is saved on an Airport Extreme by the way. Which still works pretty well!

Try right-clicking (or Ctrl-clicking) on the bundle in the Finder and choosing "Show Package Contents".


Move programs and games to external storage I want to move some programs, games from MacBook Pro SSD to the external HDD. With Xcode it was no problem. Because Xcode was under Applications and I could copy it and create link to it.

But I have some games that are not asking about installation path. And that are installed in many different places on my SSD. For example under User->Documents etc.

If I move it simply to an external drive - it doesn't work. I think they have some internal references, maybe under config files, to each part.

I want to move - GarageBand (with all additional sounds etc.), WarThunder and World of Warships from internal to external drive.

Are there any general solutions to move the programs and games
that are not stored under Application?

Or maybe guides, articles etc.

There are two ways developers can make their apps for Mac. The recommended way is to put everything the app needs into a "bundle". Apps created in this way enclose everything they need in the .app. As a result, these apps can be moved to anywhere you want, and they'll still work.

If you installed an app by dragging it's .app file from the DMG into Applications, or whatever folder it's in, it can be moved without any problems. Xcode is one of these kind of apps. Just drag the app anywhere you want. (Note: you may need to reset paths to your custom files once you open the app, such as pointing to the locations of your custom sounds, movies, whatever.)

The other way of developing apps involves using files external to the .app bundle. These apps generally have files in the system or user's Library folders or other folders, usually hidden to the average user. As a result, these apps must be "moved" differently - if they can be moved at all.

If you installed an app by double-clicking the .app or a .pkg file from within a DMG, it is very likely one of these more complex apps.  Creative Suite is an example of one of these. You might be able to move these apps in one of these ways:

use the app's installation process to select the new location, or
search around or contact the vendor to get the locations of all the external items you'll have to move, point to, or change in order to use the app from an external drive

Note: these are rules of thumb, so apply generally. Apps you get from the App Store are required to be in the bundle format, but that doesn't mean that once you open the app it doesn't store some stuff in other locations. I believe GarageBand does store information in some of the Library locations, for example.

In general, I know it's recommended that SSD be used for applications and system, and an external drive be used for storage - documents, images, movies, music, etc.

Is the reason you want to move these particular apps, especially GarageBand, because you rarely use these and they are taking up precious space on your SSD?

If that's the case, I'd recommend completely deleting GarageBand. You can always download it again, should you ever want to play around with it. Not familiar with the other games, sorry.

If that's not the case, then the simplest (but most time-consuming solution) might be to do a clean install of these apps on your external drive. This way the install software will have all the file paths set up correctly, and they should work right from the start.


Why and when do Mac laptops start themselves when connected to power? I'm a technician and noticed that, if the battery is disconnected in a Macbook/MacBook Pro: the Mac boots itself when you connect the power adapter.  It sometimes even happens when the battery is connected (after I disconnected and connected it).  What rules this?

A Mac laptop will boot itself when power is connected if (a) the firmware power on time has passed since the machine was last running (i.e. if the machine was set to power on at 6 AM every morning and it has been 6 AM since it was last powered on) OR if the machine was on (not shutdown properly) before power was removed.

The concept is that if power is lost, a Mac should return to the state it was in.

If you want to ensure that the machine does NOT power itself on,

In System Preferences -> Energy Saver ->Schedule..., remove any rule that states the machine should power on at a given time.
Shutdown the machine correctly by selecting "Shut down..." from the Apple menu and waiting until it is completely shut down.

Bill, that’s not really pertinent to what Antonio was asking. Yes, there are rules defining power schedules but his specific query can also be applied to the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Every Apple device powers itself on when it goes from a state of not connected to power to connected to power

It’s possible to power an Apple device off when it’s plugged in, but if you unplug it and plug it back in, it will immediately power on.

This is clearly something Apple carries with it and seems to be their MO, that a device that’s powered should be able to be worked with immediately. It’s a QoL situation

I think we can think of this in the same way that closing the lid on a MacBook will always sleep it (without being able to modify this behaviour outside of an Apple like Amphetamine) or closing a Smart Cover on an iPad will immediately put it to sleep.

My educated guess is that this is hardwired into the system, if power detected and device = off, turn device on. Again going back to QoL. Apple wants to ensure people have immediate access to their devices and it’s clear they are bypassing checks for batteries. I would be very intrigued to know if this behaviour is reproducible on a device like an iPad/iPhone. I don’t think it would for the watch due to the design, but I’d be interested in knowing the answer for say the iPad.


How to open link in a new tab via shortcut in Chrome on Mac? On Windows, I would just hold control, and click the 30 links on the page I wanted to open. How do I do this in Mac?

It will still take 30 clicks, one for each link, but…
Remember that  Cmd ⌘  on Mac is usually equivalent to  Ctrl ⌃  on Windows.
 Cmd ⌘  Click will open a link in a new a tab behind the current one, if you click a link.
 Cmd ⌘   Shift ⇧  Click will open the new tab & bring it to the front.
These are the default settings [iirc] but they can be changed in Prefs…

Edit:
Sorry, I only just realised you said Chrome.
It does follow the same behaviour, though I can't find anywhere to actually change it.

Click and drag the tab out of the top bar.


Change m4v type from Home Video to Movie How can I via the command line change the iTunes Media type from Home Video to Movie?   After I convert a DVD to m4v via Handbrake I would like to set the iTunes media type.

I can do this manually in iTunes but I'm looking for a command line approach so that I can automate it.

The best approach is using Subler to open the m4v file and then fetch the metadata from the iTunes Store or MovieDB. Then, just save it and add it to your iTunes library. This is as automated as the process will get.

Just change the extension from "m4v" to "mp4"?

Because "m4v" is - if you convert a video with Handbrake - a MPEG-4 file. And the usual extension for MPEG-4 files is "mp4" and not "m4v".

The question seems to be solved, but I have some questions to learn a little bit. :-)

Why is Handbrake setting the video extension to "m4v"? This extension is unusual and for special content (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4V). As Handbrake says: convert to
MP4, so the file extension should be "mp4" and not "m4v".
What do you mean with "iTunes Media Type" and "Home Video" - do you mean "Movies" and "TV Shows"? The difference between "Movie" and
"TV Shows" is usually only a difference if you download iTunes DRM
(aka iTunes bought or rented videos).
How can I change the "iTunes Media type" - and what for?
You voted "njboot" answer as solution, but I do not understand what "m4v" has to do with metadata from the iTunes Store or MovieDB.

As I said: just want to learn. My suggestion: just change "m4v" to "mp4".

I just converted a DVD with Handbrake and changed "m4v" to "mp4" - no problem. Then I added the video to iTunes (both: "m4v" and "mp4") - and both were added to "Movies".

P.S. I would prefer to post this as comment, but comments do not allow so many characters - hopefully it is okay?


Cannot save screenshot to file At some point in history I made some settings change somewhere to save screenshots to the clipboard instead of the default Desktop location. However, I did this somewhere else than this place:

I still most often want to use the clipboard, for instance when posting this question :)

My problem is that both with or without control modifier, they're always saved to clipboard. I think this is because I didn't use this setting here but something else that interferes/overrides. I currently have no way to store a screenshot without going through the hassle of creating a new file in preview to paste into… Any tips highly appreciated!

---- Update to clarify:

I have tried all the normal screencapture settings and currently have:

defaults read com.apple.screencapture
{
    location = "/Users/viktor/screenshots";
    type = png;
}

However, there is still no way OSX ever produces any files, just clipboard. This is due to the fact that I made some more obscure change some time back that was not as simple as changing the shortcut like above or these plist settings that seem to be common now. What I need help with is finding out what that was to be able to restore. It was probably 5 years or so and my guess is that the shortcut settings for this didn't even exist at the time, therefore leaving me to use something else that now overrides this…

This link here should help you with what you want right now:
https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/change-macs-default-screenshot-directory


View Song Lyrics in iTunes Assuming I have songs with lyrics already added to them, how do I easily view them when listening to a song?

With reference to the current version (iTunes 10):

Without adding third party software, you will need to actively select the currently playing song to view its lyrics.

⌘+I opens the Info window for the selected song
esc closes the Info window

If you open the Lyrics tab in the Info window, it will open in the same tab the next time you open it.

Visualizers

If you want to view the lyrics without interacting with your Mac, you might want to consider adding a third party visualizer. One such visualizer is Cover Version (freeware).

(NOTE: With OS 10.7.4 & iTunes 10.6.3, CoverVersion shows my lyrics with a upper case letter height of three pixels.  I opened the info window and changed the font from 12 pt. to 144 pt., but it didn't change the Viz.  But it's open source, so I could fix it if I were sufficiently ambitious.)

After you have installed the visualizer, you will need to select it in iTunes. For example:

View > Visualizer > Cover Version

Use ⌘+T to toggle the visualizer on/off
You can choose the menu item View > Visualizer > Options... to configure some visualizers  (For example, in Cover Version you can switch off the background graphics to make the lyrics easier to read)

Other Third Party Software

If you want to display lyrics while using your Mac for other tasks, you'll need to use a third party application.

Examples include:

Get Lyrical from Shullian Productions (Donation Ware)
LessLyrics from Ixhan (Freeware)

I search a lot about this issue before and the best free solution I was found is to use Get Lyrical. it didn't use your lyric that added to them with iTunes.


How to fix iPhone 5S reporting excessive space used for Photo Library? I have an iPhone 5S running iOS 8.1.3. I have removed all photos from the phone (i.e. the Camera Roll is empty). However, under Settings -> General -> Usage -> Manage Storage, it reports that 1.9 GB is still in use for Photos & Camera. Specifically, underneath that, it reports that 1.9 GB is being used for the Photo Library (which is ostensibly empty). This is a large chunk of the storage on my 16 GB phone!

I have tried doing a factory reset of the phone and restoring from backup, with no effect; it still reports the excessive storage usage. I've checked the following:

The Photo Library (and Recently Deleted) is empty.
Photo Stream is not enabled.
iCloud "Photos" is not enabled.
There is no photo sharing of any kind enabled.

Is there anything else that I should look at to determine why the incorrect amount of usage is being reported?

apparently the "recently deleted"-feature in iOS8 is broken.
Photos you've deleted don't disappear after 30 days, they're just hidden on your device.
The storage being used isn't "phantom usage", since the photos are still safely stored.
The easiest short term solution is to set back your date on the phone month by month (until the release of iOS8), and your deleted photos will reappear in the "recently deleted"-folder. There you can manually and permanently delete them.

As long you regularly delete all "recently deleted" images, your storage won't clog up.

If you want to get an overview of the photos on your iphone just download iexplorer. There you'll see all of them, even those you can't see on your iphone.

Here's a blog post about the issue: https://blog.tmoehle.de/ios-photo-problem/

Cheers,

Although annoying that its incorrectly reported, I would think that if it came to actually needing that space for other data, the phone should then overwrite the so called "Photo Library" and allow you to use that memory


What can be done about the calendar app closing itself on an iPad? I have been using my calendar fine but this afternoon when I click on the tile it briefly opens (1 sec) and then closes itself. I have waited 30 mins, I have turned iPad off & back on and still no joy.

This is how applications crash on iOS - so you may want to check your settings to see if your iPad is sending crash reports to Apple.

Settings App -> General -> Diagnostics & Usage

You can also look in the Data submenu from the above screen and scroll down to look for LatestCrash.plist and see if the date matches when your iCal quit.

In general, it's not possible (even as a developer) to read these reports without access to the iCal source code and you have some short term things you can do to isolate the issue further.

First is to remove any notifications (turn of WiFi and cellular data) and reboot the iPad. If iCal crashes, then it's due to the calendar data on the device and not some external cause. You can then remove your calendar information, account by account to clear up which account has the data corruption that is causing iCal to have a problem. Worst case, you will have to connect your iPad to a computer (iTunes) and force a sync to erase the calendar data on the iPad and replace it with data from the computer to clear the data that is causing the crash.

Apple will likely fix the crash (even with bad data - the program should handle it and let you know an event is broken or ignored and why) in the upcoming updates - but you can report the crash to add weight to this particular bug getting fixed.

You can also take an overkill (but faster) approach to erase all content and settings on the iPad and set it up again.

It's unlikely the data will come back corrupt from your calendar sources (or the backup) but if it does, at least you'll know a bit more about how to isolate which calendar is causing iCal to have problems.

Drag the appointment to an empty date. Then you should be able to delete it. Worked for me.


How much data has been written to my SSD over its lifetime? Is there a Terminal command which will show me how many GB has been written to my SSD through the whole lifetime of the disk? I'm asking because I want to find out how many cycles have been done. SSD are able to do about 1000–2000 cycles depending on type.

Read out the following S.M.A.R.T attributes of your SSD with an appropriate tool*:
241 - Total LBAs Written:   The total number of 512-byte sectors written during the entire lifetime of the device.
242 - Total LBAs Read:  The total number of 512-byte sectors read during the entire lifetime of the device.
A second set of attributes is:
174 - Host_Reads_MiB
175 - Host_Writes_MiB
But i don't know if the values found in the second set really make sense (at least for me with a 120 GB SSD as one part of a Fusion drive) because considerably more data is written to the SSD than the HDD though the SSD has only 1/25th of the size:
0xae Host_Reads_MiB          ----CK   100   100   000    -    12268569 (~12 TiB)
0xaf Host_Writes_MiB         ----CK   100   100   000    -    16481745 (~16 TiB)

compared to the 3 TB HDD (the second part of the Fusion drive):
0xf1 Total_LBAs_Written      ------   100   253   000    -    21361815408 (~10 TiB)
0xf2 Total_LBAs_Read         ------   100   253   000    -    23925221693 (~11 TiB)

After installing smartmontools the following commands give the written data in GB if the attribute "242 Total_LBAs_Written" exists:
smartctl -s on -i -A -f brief -f hex,id -l devstat /dev/DiskIdentifier | grep 0xf1 | awk '{ print $8/1953125 }'

or in TB:
smartctl -s on -i -A -f brief -f hex,id -l devstat /dev/DiskIdentifier | grep 0xf1 | awk '{ print $8/1953125000 }'

Replace "DiskIdentifier" with the identifier of your internal SSD found with diskutil list. Probably it's disk0.
The following command gives the written data in GB if the attribute "175 - Host_Writes_MiB" exists (treat the result with caution):
smartctl -s on -i -A -f brief -f hex,id -l devstat /dev/DiskIdentifier | grep 0xaf | awk '{ print $8/953.67 }'

For some SSDs, like the Sandisk Plus 120Gb, the $8 value is already in GB so you'll need to use division to calculate the value.
Like already mentioned earlier replace "DiskIdentifier" with the identifier of your internal SSD found with diskutil list. Probably it's disk0.
The smartctl commands above doesn't work very reliable (at least for me).
If you get an error like "Read SMART Data failed: Undefined error: 0", try smartctl -A /dev/disk0 first.
If you get an error like "SMART Disabled. Use option -s with argument 'on' to enable it.", try smartctl -s on -A /dev/disk0
Then retry the above commands to readout and calculate data written to disk.
*smartmontools

A very detailed answer has been given in this question here

The following command

  iostat -Id disk0

reflects data transfer statistics from the moment the device was mounted to the moment the iostat command was run.


External drive won't eject cleanly I have several external drives, all of which work fine, but recently purchased and backed up to a new drive (Samsung T5) which always fails to eject cleanly. Whenever I try to eject it, I'm asked:

“Drive” is a volume on a disk that has 2 volumes. Do you want to eject “ Drive” only, or both volumes?
To eject both, click Eject All, or hold down the Option key while ejecting.
To eject only “Drive,” click Eject, or hold down the Control key while ejecting.

Unless I choose Eject All, the drive stays around, so I choose Eject All. But then I get a message that says "Drive - Data" was not ejected because it was in use, and I have to Force Eject to finally eject it. When I then unplug the drive I get a warning that doing so might have caused problems.
There's nothing that I know of that's actually using the drive when I do this, and no damage seems to be done.
Why won't my Samsung T5 eject cleanly?

The drive is formatted APFS/GUID, unencrypted and is a bootable clone with FileVault enabled (though it behaved this way before FV was enabled too, and before anything was backed up to it.)

This issue is generally caused by a background process that is taking a (very) long time to complete.

In my case it was Spotlight indexing, which I don't need for the drive in question. So after confirming that it the culprit was indeed Spotlight and terminating it, I simply disabled Spotlight indexing for the drive, and now I am able to eject cleanly. Similar instructions apply for identifying and terminating whatever process is the cause generally.

Logging out and logging back in should allow you to eject any drive that does not host the operating system currently in use.

As to why, finder is often the culprit.


How to detect spy/keylogger software? I have some serious suspition that my boss installed some kind of spy software. Maybe a keylogger, screen capture or something to know what I do when he's not at the office.

I have nothing to hide so I don't know if he doesn't tell me anything because he didn't find anything out of place or because I'm being paranoid and he's not spying me.

Either way I want to be sure if I'm being spied because:

I don't want to work for someone he doesn't trust me me
It's illegal and I won't allow anyone to store my passwords (I do access my personal email, homebanking and Facebook account during lunch breaks) and personal information.

So... how can I detect spy software in a iMac running OS X 10.6.8? I have full admin permissions know it.

I tried scanning all folders in my user's and system Library but nothing rang any bell but since I think any of this software would hide the folder (either by location or name)  I don't think I'll find a folder named Employeee Spy Data

I also looked all the processes running at different moments with Activity Monitor but again... it's not like the process would be called SpyAgent Helper

Is there a list of known possible folders / processes to look for?

Any other way to detect?

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

To detect and delete apps you can use any uninstall software for Macintosh (like CleanMyMac or MacKeeper).


iPhone 4s downgrade from 9.2.1 to 9.0.2 can I downgrade my iPhone 4s iOS 9.2.1 to 9.0.2? I try using ipsw but it isn't signed at this moment. Can I create custom ipsw 9.0.2?

Its possible to downgrade my iPhone?

Thanks.

You can only downgrade if you saved an SHSH blob from the old version while Apple was still signing it. If you don't have an SHSH blob for 9.0.2 then it's too late now, and there's no way you can downgrade.


VMWare Tools do not allow changing resolution in El Capitan Looks like VMWare Tools do not allow changing resolution in El Capitan. Input data as follows:

VMWare Workstation 12
Latest VMWare Tools 8.0.2 (here)
Mac OS El Capitan, build 15B42

I've tried everything I could find online. I set sudo nvram boot-args=rootless=0 before installation. I also disabled protection via csrutil disable in Recovery.

VMWare says it's installed successfully. I see that its drivers are loading in verbose boot log.

Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: Loaded com.vmware.kext.VMwareGfx Version 0297.78.63 Build 2977863 (Aug 11 2015 19:19:22)
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: svga: Start: FB size=0x300000, FIFO size=0x200000
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: svga: Start: host_bpp=32, bpp=32, num_displays=2
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: fb: start: maxWidth 3840 maxHeight 1920 vramSize 33554432
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: fb: setDisplayMode: (1) wxh=1024x768, 32 4096
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: svga: SetMode: mode w,h=1024, 768 bpp=32
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: svga: SetMode: pitch=4096
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: fb: setDisplayMode: Display ID=1, Depth ID=0
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: fb: setDisplayMode: wxh=1024x768, bpp=32, pitch=4096
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: gfx: UpdateTraces: Enabling traces.

Nov  5 13:51:43 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: Loaded com.vmware.kext.vmmemctl Version 0297.78.63 Build 2977863 (Aug 11 2015 19:19:20)
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: Opening balloon
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: offset 0: 80
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: offset 1: 16
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: offset 2: 56
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: offset 3: 64
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: offset 4: 76
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: Timer thread started.
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: hgfs: Loaded com.vmware.kext.vmhgfs Version 0297.78.63 Build 2977863 (Aug 11 2015 19:19:16)
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: gfx: fb: VMwareFramebufferGetLastCustomResolution: Last custom resolution: missing

But unfortunately it's not working in practice - there are no screen resolutions besides 1024*768

I suspect it might be related to System Integrity Protection introduced in El Capitan. Suspiciously despite the fact that csrutil status says disabled in Recovery in real system it gives following result

Any thoughts how to make it work?

Admittedly, this is a very old thread (that I found from searching for com.vmware.kext.VMwareGfx), but I wanted to update with an answer.

I was able to get a working setup using Mojave 10.14.5, on Workstation 15 Player, using the copy of VMware Tools from Fusion 11. Additionally, I did not have to do any csrutil tweaks.

So perhaps you can try using those versions and see if things will work out of the box. Good luck!

(As for the commenter talking about the Apple licence agreement, I'm not a lawyer but I understand it's not a violation if you're running on Apple hardware. In my case I'm running this on my MacBook Pro, and I'm happy to report that macOS guests worked out of the box for me.)


How can i reduce the file size of my images in Pages on my iPad? Our school teacher is using an iPad to take photo's of their artwork, etc and then using Pages (on the same iPad) .. creating a quick 'page' or two (inserting their artwork) and then emailing the page to the parents (as a pdf).

Unfortunately, the pdf is massive. Too big for most of us.

I'm guessing this is because the PDF is using the original size of the images.

When I send images as attachments in an email on my iPhone I get asked which size I would like - eg original, or small, etc. etc.

Q1. Is there a way we can get Pages to use a smaller image size?
Q2. When I sent an email to myself from that iPad and attached a single image, I was not asked to resize it :( Is there a way to do that, also?

Otherwise - what options do we have?

We do not what to leave the iPad to send these images. (ie. sync somehow and then use a desktop to do all of this).

Please help!

Best is to reduce the photos before they are added to Pages.

For printing they do not have to be more than 300 dpi.

For viewing on the screen about 75 - 100 dpi.

Pages doesn't do the job as you found out.

You can do it in Preview > tools > Adjust size (on a Mac)

If do not ant to leave the iPad then you can use one of the many external apps to do it.

Simple Resize (Free)

or Image Resizer+ ($0.99)

Additional Info:

The Resolution has the biggest impact on the file size, not so the size of the image.

Take the photo from a little further away then crop it.


Safari remember password of all sites after upgrading to 7.0.2 I upgraded to Mavericks 9.0.2 the day it was released. I recently found that Safari now asks if I want it to remember passwords on all sites, including sites that I explicitly chose not to remember passwords, like banks. Is this the normal behavior of the updated Safari, or is something wrong with my Mac?

My Safari version is 7.0.2 (9537.74.9)

It sounds like it is a new version of Safari. If you don't like it, there is always Chrome!


How does one rotate iMac display using Yosemite? With my Mid-2012 MBA running Mountain Lion, I have no issues at all in rotating my display after hitting display in preferences while holding cmd + option keys. However, I've run into a snag with my Late-2013 27" iMac running OS X Version 10.10.2. I would like to rotate my display 270 degrees. What's a workaround I can use to do this?

Edit 1: To be clear, I'm trying to rotate my actual iMac display in the same way I can with my MBA.

This isn't the most elegant solution but there is a C based utility available at https://github.com/CdLbB/fb-rotate. To use the utility, click the download zip in Github. Extract the zip to your downloads folder and then run these commands in the terminal (copy and paste one line at a time, pressing enter after each line) to compile the program (only needs to be done once):

cd ~/Downloads/fb-rotate-master
gcc -w -o fb-rotate fb-rotate.c -framework IOKit -framework ApplicationServices

After that is done, you can run the program like this:

~/Downloads/fb-rotate-master/fb-rotate -d 0 -r 270

The 270 at the end is the rotation you would like. Applicable values are 0, 90, 180, 270. If you feel comfortable enough, you could move this out of your downloads folder, but you would need to edit those terminal commands. You could also turn it into an apple script to make the process easier. (Let me know if you need help with this)

Make sure that you quit the System Preferences first.

Re-open "System Preferences" and then cmd+option click on "Displays". You should now have access to the Rotation setting.

The quitting of the System Preferences is needed. At least, this is how it works on my Mac Book with OS X 10.10.


Can't access internet Suddenly, a couple of days ago, I have started to have major problems accessing internet through my home network, with my MacBook Pro Mid 2012 (non-retina) running Mountain Lion.

I connect to the network just fine, but when can't open web pages or when I try to ping google.com I get:

ping: cannot resolve google.com: Unknown host

or something like:

PING google.com (173.194.32.33): 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
64 bytes from 173.194.32.33: icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=43.372 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2
Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
Request timeout for icmp_seq 4
64 bytes from 173.194.32.33: icmp_seq=5 ttl=53 time=45.110 ms

--- google.com ping statistics ---
6 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 66.7% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 43.372/44.241/45.110/0.869 ms

I can't find any pattern to the results.

ALL other devices on the router has no problem access neither the network or internet. Of these are another MacBook Pro, an iPad, several iPhones, Apple TV, and misc.

The network is set up to configure IPv4 with DHCP and IPv6 automatically. (Under General > Network Wi-Fi > Advanced > TCP/IP)

I have tried flushing the DNS with both: (https://gist.github.com/mipmip/1844353)

sudo killall -INFO mDNSResponder
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

I have tried removing and adding the Wi-Fi interface from General > Network.

And of course I have tried rebooting the modem, router and computer.

What else should I do to get internet working again?

Delete the following 3 files located in ~Library > Preferences > SystemConfiguration :

 com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
 com.apple.network.identification.plist
 NetworkInterfaces.plist

Delete the airport / wifi network interface and re-create.
Reboot and connect to WiFi

EDIT: This initially work, but after a couple hours I'm back where I started.

Fixed it! I found this which helped me: No internet access on MacBook Air, though I can connect to networks

Apparently my mDNSResponder daemon was corrupt. To fix:

I copied com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist and com.apple.mDNSResponderHelper.plist in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ from a MacBook Pro which could already acces the web.

I set the correct owner and persmisisons:

sudo chown root:wheel com.apple.mDNSResponder*
sudo chmod 644 com.apple.mDNSResponder*

Like this:

-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  1109 Apr 23 14:40 /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  1035 Apr 23 14:38 /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist.backup


Isn't Inactive memory a waste of resources? I'm looking for explanation of memory usage on my machine especially in light of the example in this screenshot below:

I understand what is Free and Active means
But what are the meanings of Wired and Inactive?

Especially inactive, why does it use so much memory for something that we do not use?

Inactive memory got a horrible rap due to a crappy name. It should have been called something like "make your Mac really fast the second, third, and fourth time it does the same task" memory except that's an awful name, too.

Apple re-wrote the activity monitor when it introduced several new features and added compressed memory, so some of this no longer applies to macOS that don’t show “Inactive Memory” but this still applies to Mac OS X memory management as documented against this version of Activity Monitor: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201538

Here's how I explained things to someone new to the concept of virtual memory on OS X:

Wired: The system cannot run without this amount of RAM (never swapped)
Active: Programs are really using this memory now or in the last few seconds
Inactive: Things that programs have read from the slow disk or elsewhere and said they never need again. Engineers know better, you will go back to Facebook in a few minutes or re-launch Word after quitting it. The same things happen again and again on computers.
Free: Totally Wasted RAM - the system only needs one or two MB free to cover short term allocation requests. For largest allocations, it simply uses some of the Inactive RAM by allocating it to active/wired and removing the information on what it used to hold.

The problem arises when Free+Inactive is less than roughly 1/3 of the total and then things can really get slow.

Inactive memory is bonus speed / double duty RAM. It serves as free at a moment's notice, but also makes repeated tasks much, much faster if the system guessed correctly and kept something in RAM that you will do again. It's faster than swapped memory since it's already loaded in RAM and accelerates things when the virtual memory system makes good guesses.

When you are wondering if RAM is a problem, rather than looking at each of the 4 categories (5 if you count active swap), you can couple W+A as slowing down a new program/task and F+I as speeding up a new program/task. The more F+I you have, the more new programs you can launch before the RAM needs to rely on swapping to juggle the memory that has been allocated.

You don't really need to know how swap works since I mentioned it above. Basically, when a program is sitting idle and hasn't been used for days (or hours) the system will write that RAM to the hard drive rather than kill the program. This lets the system shuffle and handle all sorts of things relating to memory management and keeps each program from needing to talk amongst themselves to agree who will use less memory when the system runs out.

Here is a real world example of how inactive RAM is used.

Quit all apps and make sure the two Apps we are testing are not set to auto start when you log in
Reboot your Mac
Fire up your Activity Monitor and watch the RAM throughout
Time how long it takes to start Application A (MS Word would be a good choice)
Quit A
Time how long it takes to start Application B (Adobe something would also be good)
Quit B
Time how long the second launch of A takes
Quit A
Time B's second launch.
Time A's start the third time with B running.

You should see dramatic speedups for the second / third launch as the system learns to keep in inactive RAM the things these two apps need to run.

In your case - the total of Wired and Active means that some swapping to disk is likely happening and your Mac isn't as fast as it could be since your inactive RAM isn't large enough to store all the things you might need to reuse. If you have a fast SSD drive, this RAM allocation is OK and instead of starting to slow down once less than 1/2 of your RAM is F+I, you can cut things closer to like 1/4 of the total RAM for F+I before seeing noticeable slowness. These guidelines are general, and you'll want to watch vm_stat 15 or some similar interval to ensure continual and medium volume swapping isn't making your Mac slow.

Inactive memory in essence, makes opening up formerly closed processes faster. If you find that the Mac OS is taking up too much memory you don't really need like from the dozens of tabs you opened on Safari or Chrome just use the 'purge' command in the Terminal. In OS X Mavericks just use 'sudo purge' instead (you will need to input your password). It shaves off precious seconds when you need to open something up again, but if you want to play a RAM intensive game or open a RAM hungry application I definitely suggest using the purge command.


What are the downsides to using Time Machine? I hear a lot about the good aspects of using Time Machine, particularly the fact that it's so easy to use that people actually do backups!

What are the downsides to using Time Machine compared to other contemporary backup programs? My particular interest is the disadvantages of using it in a (semi)-managed environment i.e. at a university.

Here are some of the limitations you have to accept or mitigate if you choose Time Machine:

Time machine requires an apple specific HFS+ filesystem to store backups.
The backup isn't bootable.
The backup doesn't record differences inside a file. Large (database) files with tiny changes make each incremental save longer and move more data. This also can eat up storage space faster if these type files are not excluded and potentially backed up another way if they can't be regenerated after a restore (like mail stored on IMAP servers)
It must be an external drive or an official apple network destination like TimeCapsule or Mac OS X Server to be a supported by Apple.
It will delete backups according to the official scheule ( hourly backups combine and expire after a day. Dailies expire after 31 days. Weekly backups can be deleted if there isn't enough space to contain the estimated size of the next backup.  In odd cases or if there is a bug, you could end up with all the history gone an one copy of the last backup.
The destination volume must be larger in size than the boot volume.

Once you are aware of these limitations, it's fairly easy to work around all but the first limitation with some planning and/or extra software / hardware. The HFS+ format for storage is pretty inflexible with no realistic mitigation or workarounds.

Time Machine was evil to me.  It did not properly prompt me how to deal with the file vault situation.  I am forever drag and drop and carbonite.  Note:  Carbonite does not store pictures and videos in the big format you may have them in so if you want your FULL DATA of your photos (bigger files with more detail) then you need to drag and drop them to an external hard drive and let carbonite deal with all the smaller files.  Carbonite does not turn your file vault data into encrypted data that you may NEVER have back again and it is LOST FOREVER!!!  Carbonite saves it (even while file vault is running) as perfect just the way you see it except as I said before larger files such as photos and videos.

I hope you all stay away from Time Machine if you have precious data and forget when you had file vault on or off.  There are no prompters like a window popping up saying "Please before doing this time machine back up turn off your file vault, log out of your computer and log back in and THEN run the time machine".  That would be a very simple window to have pop up don't you think?


Blocking iOS Wi-Fi automatic update downloads? I've got several iPads connected to Verizon mifi devices(MiFi460LE)
iOS has a "feature" that automatically downloads OS updates in the background without user input. (You still need to manually install the updates, but the downloads happen automatically).
The 6.1 update may break the functionality of some in-house applications, and I'd rather not hand users an iPad with a flashing self-destruct button that tells users to "download now!"
Is there a specific port that could be blocked to prevent iOS OTA software updates? If that's not sufficient, would blocking hosts from DNS or another way of preventing these downloads be feasible?

Without jailbreaking, or using an MDM (mobile device management) solution, you could just block the Apple site at your router. The site URL is appldnld.apple.com. All of Apple's IPSW files come from that location.


Make iTunes stop prompting me for my username and password On OSX Lion, iTunes keeps prompting me to enter my username and password to "sign in to enable this computer for automatic downloads." In the past I tried checking the box to remember my password but it kept forgetting, so now I just disabled the "always check for available downloads" option in Prefs -> Store. It still prompts me. It drives me crazy.

Is there a way to get it to stop prompting for my password, so it will just behave like a well-behaved offline music library manager, and only ask me for my username and password when I open the iTunes store?

All you need to do is Sign OUT of the itunes store!

If you are signed in, each time you fire up iTunes, it will try to login again and ask for your password. Sign out and it won't bother you!

I just deleted iTunes no more sign ins. Hooray.


Apache running on Yosemite not working as expected I plan to use both /Library/Webserver/Documents and ~username/Sites/. I have phpmyadmin folder in /Sites directory. If I go to

http://localhost/~username/phpmyadmin

it works, but if I go to

http://localhost/phpmyadmin

I get "The requested URL /phpmyadmin/ was not found on this server.". I've reviewed the relevant files to make sure I enabled the relevant lines and such. Am I missing something obvious?

You've essentially set up two different sites here:

For http://localhost your files are stored in /Library/Webserver/Documents.

For http://localhost/~username the files are stored in ~username/Sites

Therefore, anything you put in ~username/Sites will only be available when you go to http://localhost/~username.  If you want to keep the two things separate, you'll need to put the "phpmyadmin" under /Library/Webserver/Documents instead of http://localhost/~username.

This question on Stack Overflow should be able to help get your localhost up and running again.

Get localhost running on OS X Yosemite


How to connect to a FTP server from a Wi-Fi Hotspot that prevents direct FTP connections? I am using the wifi at a library where they prevent me to connect to FTP servers for some reason. I need to upload my work.

Is there any tool or trick to go around this?

I actually have found one solution:

net2ftp - a web based FTP client

Usual warnings concerning (non-)confidentiality of data etc. apply.

You can do it by connecting directly via Internet Explorer.
 You just have to tap in the url : ftp://ftp.yourwebsite.com / Then enter your password and that's it.
But it can only be a temporary solution because I don't think it's really safe to do it that way ...


Using locate.updatedb doesn't work in Lion A week ago I upgraded to Lion from Snow Leopard. I want to use the locate command, but the locate database has not been built yet. So I tried running

sudo launchctl -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locate.plist

The plist file only points to /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb and I keep getting the following error in syslog su: pam_acct_mgmt: error in service module
When I try running locate.updatedb directly I get the same error in syslog.

I could handle not using locate, but what bugs me the most is that I don't know what's causing the issue.

Debugging pam can be tricky.

Have you tried making a real root shell with sudo -s and running the /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb command.

Alternatively, you could try making a new admin account to be sure your admin account has correct privelages/authentication. Any odd things like server or OpenLDAP that we should know of?

Check your .bashrc paths. Include /usr/libexec in the $PATH statement if its missing.


What hidden features have you found in iOS 6? This is the required hidden gems questions for iOS 6.

Here are the rules:

One feature per answer
Also include how you use the feature or why it is useful
Must be an under-documented feature. No "flag pole" features like VIP's in Mail.

Alarms can now make use of songs not just built in tones. Edit your alarm and select sound and then pick a song.

Rearrange mailboxes. I receive email from about 8 different email addresses and now you can rearrange the order in which they appear.

From the Mailbox Screen, select Edit in top right hand corner of the panel. The three transparent grey lines that indicate moving/rearranging appear. Drag and drop accordingly.


How to access the IR sensor of MacBook Pro Mid 2010 to be able to use non apple remotes I have an Audio to IR accessory for my iPhone which works very well with most of the TVs and DVD players as the app that comes with it supports them.

I was wondering if it would be possible to write an iPhone App + Mac App that would let me control my MacBook Pro similar to how Apple remote works.

Is the IR sensor on MacBooks accessible to third party applications ?

Any Open Source Projects, SDK's or hacks you nice people can point me towards ?

You may want to investigate candlair, or its big brother, Remote Buddy (google them). Candlair I believe only supports apple remotes, but remote buddy should let you configure other types of remotes with relative ease (they have a supported hardware list which is significantly larger than the stock IR port's driver). I've never used it though since my apple remote does everything i need. Good luck!

Below is the original "content of my post":

I use the Ignition app from LogMeIn on my iPhone/iPad via the network to fully control my Mac.

It works at home and I've also used it in an Iowa cornfield via a cellular data connection.

I posted this in reply a few weeks ago in response to a different question regarding remote computer/screen control.

I have no idea why it linked to this question.


How to install Ubuntu from OS X? I'm looking for a solution that would enable me to install Ubuntu and run it as a virtual machine under OS X but still be able to boot directly Ubuntu.

If possible I would like to test both scenarios: Ubuntu guest on OS X host and Ubuntu host and OS X guest.

If I remember correctly, you should be able to install Ubuntu into Boot Camp, and then virtualize it using Parallels Desktop. Works great with Windows; most likely with Ubuntu as well.

To my knowledge, you can't have an Ubuntu virtual machine (VMware, VirtualBox or even Xen) and then be able to native boot the same. Seems kind of crossed purposes to me... :)


Copying applications from applications folder to external and reinstalling osx Is it possible to copy all my applications from the applications folder onto an external, format my mac, reinstall OS X and finally copy the applications back into the applications folder for installing them?

Will that work? I am asking because my macbook seems to be behaving in a very odd manner, has become excessively sluggish and is preventing me from recording anything in logic.. I have tried the usual freeing up space, clean desktop, fixing permissions, verifying and repairing disk as well as resetting pram and making sure I have all the latest software and firmware updates. The macbook is only 8 months old and is running Lion with 8gb of ram, I really cannot understand what is wrong with it. Even when trying to watch a movie, the player will get serious audio/video synchronisation issues and I noticed that every time my wifi is on the fans speed up like a plane taking off. I even checked and it is clean from any dust. I am perplexed :(

If anyone could help me please, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks in advance!

Sure. That's definitely possible. I would recommend you use Time Machine to create a backup of your computer, that way you wouldn't lose any data. Also, because you're using 'Apple's way', its guaranteed to work better

Backing it up: Time Machine
Time Machine, by default, will backup your entire computer. However, you can choose to exclude certain folders from the backup:

In Time Machine preferences you can click the Options button to adjust settings. A sheet similar to this appears when you click Options:

This sheet allows you to exclude files, folders, or entire volumes from being backed up. You might want to do this to avoid filling up your backup drive.

Restoring it: Migration Assistant
Then, using OS X Recovery, you can do an Erase and Install. Once that is complete, you can use Migration Assistant to bring across certain information, like just your Apps, or perhaps your user information as well.

This would be the preferred way as it ensures just in case, you wont lose anything you explicitly want to and Apple system applications are reinstalled correctly.

Resources:

HT1427 Mac Basics: Time Machine
HT4718 OS X: About OS X Recovery
PH11273 OS X Mountain Lion: Erase and reinstall OS X
HT4889 How to use Migration Assistant to transfer files from another Mac

You need to copy the content of both the applications and application support folders. This can be done by drag and drop or via terminal command prompt. Check video at https://youtu.be/vUlJi5Qzmbs


Why does my iPad screen feel sticky? Lately, I've noticed that my iPad's touch screen feels sticky to touch which makes it difficult to swipe in a smooth motion (particular when several swipes in quick succession have to be done in quick succession). As I don't use a screen protector, I initially suspected that this could be due to the build up of oils on the screen but wiping the screen with a microfiber cloth (even with a damp one) does little to help the problem.

The device is 4 months old at the time of writing; the screen should still be in reasonable shape. What could be the problem here and what can I do to fix it?

There are cleaning kits targeted for the iPad that might give you a better result than just a damp cloth. I personally bought the Hama Premium Cleaning Kit for iPad and I'm quite happy about it.

The second parameter in the equation are ofcourse your hands, the dryness/greasiness of your fingers will influence the comfort of the moment. Personally, I've found that just after washing my hands I feel some resistance when swiping the screen, and it works best with a more natural greasiness.

Just make sure that all your fingers are dry while using iPad.


"Automatically install new apps" not working I've got "Automatically install new apps" checked on all my iDevices, but it hardly ever does what it says.  For example, I just downloaded three new apps to my computer and then did a Sync operation on two iPads and an iPhone -- none of the new apps showed up.  On the App List, they each showed the button as Install.  When I pressed the Install button on the App List for each of the affected apps, they then installed on the next Sync.

Just to keep me guessing, new apps WILL occasionally install correctly, but I've never figured out what magic circumstance triggered the proper behavior.

Ideas?

Apple is not doing very good programming lately, they have shifted their resources to making iOS look pretty. They are not enterprise ready yet and this is just one example, I have ran into this issue about 20 times and its such a time consuming task to manually click update or install on each iPad, because you can hold the command key and clicking one app will automatically highlight all, but yes the automatically install new apps checkmark should do all this for you, applause for Apple's software team on their historic buggy software releases.
I am not 100% on this but make sure your restrictions allow apps to be deleted and install apps is allowed, and delete all caches in the users library, reboot, try again.. sorry if that doesnt help..


How can I stop MacOS 10.14.4 Safari from automatically logging me in when I select a password? When I go to a site that has a password saved and I select the password, Safari attempts to log me in immediately. However, this completely breaks functionality on some websites (ex adding accounts to RES etc). I believe this "feature" was added recently (10.14.4?).

I was able to disable requiring Touch ID to log in, which is a step in the right direction, but I want to disable the auto login completely, while still autofilling passwords. Is this possible/how can I do it?

Background

Unfortunately it looks like Apple decided to change this behavior in Safari, at least according to this article titled: Safari: macOS browser now autosubmits logins. Here’s how to disable it:

  Apple changed the behavior of Safari in macOS 10.14.4, and you may
  have noticed it and thought it was a bug. Now, if you have stored a
  password for a website, when you select a login entry to autofill,
  Safari 12.1 for macOS automatically submits the login. Previously, it
  would fill the fields and still require you to click a Login or Submit
  or other button to proceed.

Apple mentions it here in their Mojave 10.14.4 Update release notes (2nd bullet):

  Safari

  Adds Dark Mode support for websites that support custom color schemes
  Streamlines website login when filling credentials with Password AutoFill
  Allows push notification prompts only after interacting with a website
  Adds a warning when an insecure webpage is loaded
  Removes support for the expired Do Not Track standard to prevent potential use as a fingerprinting variable; Intelligent Tracking
  Prevention now protects against cross-site tracking by default

Workaround

So it looks like your only recourse here is to disable auto fill under the  "User names and passwords" section of the AutoFill tab of Safari's preferences.

AutFill tab under Safari Preferences

Edit under User names and passwords

NOTE: That dialog is actually just the Passwords tab, so you can just navigate to it directly.

Or you could just Private Browse.

This stops the auto logging in functionality but leaves the passwords you have for any particular site. This seems to work when I have multiple logins for each site under different email addresses. This does seem to halt the auto login process

The downside, your website history is not recorded. Though that may be a good thing?


Safari: Can I open all bookmarks in a bookmark folder in a new window? Is it possible to open all bookmarks in a bookmark folder in Safari in a new Safari window?

I know that I can do this with a single bookmark, but can I do the same with a bookmark folder?

Open the Bookmarks menu, top left, right click the folder of bookmarks, Open in Tabs...

Though irritatingly, it re-uses the current window, so maybe start with a new one first.


What is the relevance of "Low Signal" in battery usage stats? iOS 8 shows "Low Signal" in the battery usage stats, like here:

How great is the effect of signal quality on battery life? In other words, if the signal quality was better, would the stats be more like, let's say, 10% or 20% instead of the 31% for Personal Hotspot?

You’ll see “low signal” when you are using service in a poor reception area. When the phone needs to search for a signal all the time it uses more battery life. We normally see this on Home & Lock Screen and Personal Hotspot. The best thing to do to save battery in these situations is look for a way to get a better signal, or maybe even turn cellular off when you are in really bad reception areas. You can turn off cellular by going to Settings -> Cellular -> Off. With this off you can’t make calls, so you don’t want to leave this off all the time, but it can help in some situations.

"Better" is relative so the percentages would probably vary by situation.

Signal quality is not dependant upon you as a user; it is up to the carrier to supply these needs. At the cost that one of these carriers would charge on a monthly basis, the least they can do is provide a cellular service in which they sell the device is this not relevant


Can a Mac Mini drive three monitors? I'm the owner of three Samsung SyncMaster 245BW monitors (resolution: 1920 x 1200). I'm interested in getting a Mac Mini and was wondering if I'll be able to connect the Mac Mini to all three monitors such that I can have a separate desktop on each. Does the Mac Mini come with the hardware / software to do this? Thanks!

Alot depends on what Mac Mini you have. Early Mac Minis only had a single DVI out, later versions had mini DVI out, still newer versions had a mini DVI and a mini DisplayPort out, and the newest all metal version has a mini DisplayPort and HDMI out and comes with an HDMI to DVI adapter.

Negrino was correct in saying that you could get a USB to DVI adapter but you might only have to get one of them, depending on your Mac Mini's video out ports. If you have an early G4 or Core Solo Mini, you would have to get 2 adapters.

For a little clarification, are you planning on mirroring your desktop 3 times or having 1 desktop extended over 3 monitors? If it is the first option then you could simply get a VGA or DVI Y adapter that would mirror the image coming out of one port to 2 or more monitors.

Updated info: if you get the current (2011) Mac Mini with AGP graphics (the higher-end version, not the one with built-in Intel graphics) it can drive three displays right out of the box: two from Thunderbolt and one from the HDMI port.

Note footnote (3) on this page:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4885


iOS 9 Automatic Downloading If iOS 9 automatically downloads (I know it doesn't automatically install, but it does automatically download) on an iPhone with iOS 8, and I delete the update file from the Settings app, will iOS 9 redownload automatically?

Yes it will download automatically if you don't disable it manually.

To turn off automatic download you need to go to your settings then to the App Store and iTunes Store settings and turn it off :


original iPad not charging Ok, I just bought a brand new original iPad. Sounds impossible, right? Well, we just opened the box, and it is not even charging. There is no indication that this iPad even works even though it is technically "new." Is this something that Apple will need to fix or do I just need to let it sit on the charger overnight and hope it wakes up from a 2 year sleep in its box?

To sum up:

When the battery of an iOS device is fully depleted, it needs a few minutes of charging before it turns on.
You need to use original cable and adapter
If charging an iPad, use the wall outlet instead of laptop's USB port when possible.

Did you buy this from Apple? If so, have it replaced. It comes with a 1 year warranty. About the issue: Leave it plugged in over night. Sometimes iOS devices (especially iPads I've noticed) appear to be nothing more than a paper weight even after an hour of "charging". Sometimes they power back up after a while, sometimes they don't. If it doesn't, and it's not under warranty, I'd replace the battery.


On OS X, what files are excluded by rule from a Time Machine backup? In addition to whatever files I may choose to exclude, what files does the system exclude by rule or classification?

It might make sense not to backup Trash or Caches, but I'm looking for a way to tell what files are skipped "behind the scenes." Knowing if the system maintains an exclusion list or exclusion pattern would be very helpful in managing larger groups of macs.

There's a built-in list of exclusions stored in /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist. It's a bit too long to paste here comfortably, so I've posted a copy StdExclusions.plist (10.7.1) on Pastebin. There also is StdExclusions.plist (10.6.8 Server) on Pastebin.

Some of the more obvious user file exclusions are Trash, Document revisions and MobileBackups from the local Time Machine store are all excluded. The rest of the exclusions are for system things like caches and databases that exist to index other files where the system can regenerate these databases after a restore.

In addition, apps can use a file's metadata to exclude a file from backups. You can view this list of files by running the command:

sudo mdfind "com_apple_backup_excludeItem = 'com.apple.backupd'"

On my system this outputs the following:

/Users/brant/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache
/Users/brant/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml
/Users/brant/Library/iTunes/iPod Software Updates
/Users/brant/Library/iTunes/iPad Software Updates
/Users/brant/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates
/Users/brant/Pictures/iPod Photo Cache
/Volumes/Archive/brant/Pictures/iPhoto Library/iPod Photo Cache
/Volumes/Archive/brant/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml
/Users/brant/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Safe Browsing Csd Whitelist
/Users/brant/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Safe Browsing Bloom
/Users/brant/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Safe Browsing Bloom Filter 2
/Users/brant/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Safe Browsing Download
/Users/brant/Documents/Virtual Machines/Visual Studio.pvm/{ae6f7518-762e-4fcd-b166-c7a914fc237f}.mem
/Users/brant/Music/iTunes/Album Artwork/Cache
/Users/brant/Library/Saved Application State
/Users/brant/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/History-journal
/Users/brant/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Favicons-journal
/Users/brant/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Favicons
/Users/brant/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/History
/Users/brant/Library/Icons/WebpageIcons.db
/Users/brant/Library/Safari/WebpageIcons.db

As you can see, there are a few files here which various apps have told Time Machine not to bother with. Internally, this works by changing the extended attribute  com.apple.metadata:com_apple_backup_excludeItem.

Furthermore, on Lion, the tmutil command allows you to query, set, and delete file exclusions from the command line:

tmutil isexcluded _item_ will determine if the volume, directory or file is currently excluded.
tmutil addexclusion _item_ sets an exclusion rule so that the item (even if moved to a new location or renamed) will be excluded from future backups.
tmutil addexclusion -p _item_ sets an exclusion rule so that the item path is excluded. This remains unchanged so if the file moves it will be backed up if not at this exact path and also will prevent backing up a file if it comes back in the same location as the rule specifies.
tmutil removeexclusion _item_ removed either type of exclusion rule as appropriate.

If you want to check for the presence of the extended attribute com.apple.metadata:com_apple_backup_excludeItem on a specific file/directory you can use the xattr command:

xattr path_to_file_name

Or the mdls command (which will also show you the metadata attributes):

mdls path_to_file_name

But the best way to check if a file/dir is excluded from backup is to use tmutil, as suggested above, since it also checks whether it is on any exclusion list:

tmutil isexcluded path_to_file_name


How can I remove stickers from the lid of my MacBook Pro? I've got a MacBook Pro with Retina display and I've got a ton of stickers on it. Is there a method for removing the stickers from the back without damaging the finish and without leaving sticky residue on the laptop?

Is this something I can get help with from the Genius Bar?

Just peel off the stickers.

The best thing for removing the residue is Teatree oil. You can get it from Walgreens in the US, and most chemists in Australia.

Just soak some cotton wool (or other soft cloth) in the oil (so you don't scratch the surface of your MacBook) and wipe until no residue is left.

Because the oil is viscous I would make sure that your TimeMachine backup is  up to date before use.  Don't kiss your brand new looking Mac as the oil is poisonous if ingested.


Using night shift/f.lux on external monitors Mac OS 10.15 I’m having an issue using Night Shift, f.lux, or any blue light filter application on 2 of the 3 external monitors I have hooked up to my MacBook Pro via a Dell docking station. This is my hardware:

MacBook Pro 2019
Dell D6000 dock
Dell 24 in monitor
Dell 24 in monitor
LG 34 in monitor

I’ve tried reseating cables, reinstalling display link drivers, and downloading other blue light filter applications like f.lux.

I have a Dell D6000 docking station and had the same issue.
Got it working after I did the following:

Quit the Displaylink Manager application and set it so that it does not start on startup.
Unplug the Dock connection to your Macbook.
Replug the Dock connection to your Macbook.

The monitors should work AND with Night Shift without needing to have the DisplayLink manager running in the background.


Updating iTunes to 11.1.0 gives an error I tried to download the iTunes 11.1 update and received the following error. Does anyone know what could be causing it?

  The operation couldn’t be completed. (NSURLErrorDomain error -1102.)

It's due to the overload on Apple's side relating to the launch of iOS 7 a few hours ago.

That part of the download infrastructure should scale up over time well - try again every 30 minutes or so.

try now, it's working....it was overloaded i guess.


safari and firefox now crash immediately on launch in yosemite 10.10.1 my browsers started crashing immediately on launch on my late 2012 mac mini.

i reinstalled yosemite 10.10.1 again, and for a whole day, safari behaved perfectly. then both browsers started crashing again.

i reset PRAM, installed latest java, ran virus check, but no dice.

any solutions to this found?

Genieo Adware is installed.  Removing it will help.

  If you have another browser installed, use it.
     If not, launch App store and get another  browser for temporary use.
     Remove it afterwards.

  Use  free  AdwareMedic by clicking “Download ” from here

  http://www.adwaremedic.com/index.php

  Install , open,  and run it by clicking “Scan for Adware” button   to remove adware.
     Once done, quit AdwareMedic by clicking AdwareMedic in the menu bar and selecting
     “Quit AdwareMedic”.

  or

  Remove the adware  manually  by following the “HowTo” from Apple.
     http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203987
  Safari > Preferences > Extensions
      Turn those off and relaunch Safari to test .
      Turn those on one by one and test.

Originally posted to the Apple discussion forum

Remove Flash, reboot and reinstall Flash. This fixed constant safari crashes on 10.10.1 for me. Search on adobe.com for "remove flash" and follow instructions.


Apps not opening "Verifying" Some of the apps on my MacBook Air (OS El Capitan) specifically my Grand Theft Auto are not opening because a prompt appears "Verifying (Name Of The App)". I've tried countless times to fix this but nothing has worked. Any suggestions on how might I fix this?

If you are sure that you downloaded the app installer from the official/verified source and that it has not been tempered with, you can skip the verification process altogether by removing the extended file attribute that causes FileVault to attempt to verify the application. Do this by executing the following command from terminal:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/app_name.app

The app_name.app is the name of the application you are changing the extended attributes on. In this case, GTA5.app.

The xattr command allows you to view and change extended file attributes. The -d flag indicates you are deleting the com.apple.quarantine attribute which is set on the application package. Any file with the extended attribute of com.apple.quarantine is verified by FileVault. This attribute is typically automatically set on downloaded files and files extracted from a tar or zip archive.

This seems to be the answer:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_install-mso_mac/office-2016-for-mac-cant-get-past-verifying/5b001c4a-611d-421a-b2ec-9632ae6271cc

Hope that helps!


Is there a terminal command to keep apps from quitting? In macOS Terminal.app how can I issue a command similar to caffeinate that keeps all running applications from quitting?

In my System Preferences I have Energy Saver to: computer sleep-never and Display sleep-never, I even have caffeinate issued in the terminal.

After a while of no keyboard or mouse activity the screen will go to login mode. All apps like Excel and Mail have quit except those that required a save.

Even Terminal is asking if I really want to quit. I want all to be as if I were touching my keyboard every few minutes so not even the login screen shows and Excel never quits.

You can use the screen terminal window manager and its detach feature. This command is installed by default on OS X.

Example scenario.

Open a terminal
Run screen
Run a program of your choice e.g. htop.
Suspend this program (Ctrl+z) and run it in background bg
Detach your current session (Ctrl+a d)
Exit your session and exit the terminal
Open the terminal again
List running session with screen -ls
Go back to your session with screen -r <session id>
Use your program again with fg


Is it wise to turn off the iPad completely if I don't use it during the day? A friend of mine has an iPad that she uses only once a day for about a half hour.

I told her to turn it off completely in between uses to conserve energy - no point having the device run in standby for 23.5 hours a day. (So no standby, but a real "swipe to turn off" shutdown.)

I'm not completely sure whether this is correct, though. Is this the optimal way to go in terms of optimal battery lifespan? Battery life (i.e. the time until she has to recharge it again) is secondary, we just want to preserve the battery for as long as possible.

Apple's iPad battery tips don't give any hints, nor does what appears to be the reference question here on Apple.SE.

The total life of the iPad's battery is going to be affected by the temperature you keep the battery at and the number of discharge-charge cycles it goes through.

Turning off the iPad will cause the battery to drain more slowly than leaving it in standby mode. But the battery will still be draining when the device is "powered off" as there's circuitry enabled to detect you pressing the power button to turn it back on.

I'm not sure how long an iPad that's off will hold its charge vs. one that is simply sitting in standby mode. I can't imagine the marginal gain in battery life is worth the hassle of waiting for it to power up every time you want to use it.

I have actually noticed that my iPad 2 consumes less power while in standby than it does if it is completely shutdown. I can leave it in standby for several days, and the battery will slowly lose its charge over that time. However, if I completely shutdown the iPad and do not use it for a few days, the battery will be completely drained and I have to plug it in to power it back on. It seems like a very poor electronic design to me. Why would anything lose more power while it is supposedly turned off?


Local backup of iCloud Photo Library I'm using iCloud Photo Library to store all my full size photos and keep everything synced between my laptop and iPhone. The laptop has a small SSD, so I use the optimize space feature to keep only low-res photos locally.
This all works great, but I want to have a backup of the full-res photos on an external disk, in case the iCloud servers fail. Time Machine will only backup the low-res photos in the local library. I want to continue using the local Photo Library without having the external backup disk connected all the time.

One possibility is to create a second macOS user account, set it up with the same iCloud credentials, disable optimized storage, set its Photo Library location to the external disk, and login to this account weekly to do a backup. But this seems sort of clunky. What is the preferred "Apple way" of doing this?

@Elliott: Do you have the option of creating regular backups of your external disks? If so, you could symlink your photo library to the external source, backup that source however often you like, all the while using your full res photos instead of the low res versions. The photos would not be stored on your Mac hard drive (thus freeing up that space), but would be stored on backed-up external drives instead.

I've successfully done this before using both iPhoto and iTunes (among other things), and now regularly move all my important things to external drives for safe keeping. Backups of your backups is key, but drive space is cheap!

Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Option(Alt) + left click on the photos.app icon, then there will pop up a window to choose which library to open.  Now use whether you can set different iCloud settings for each library.