How to prevent iOS 10 apps from "resetting" when activated after being backgrounded? Sometimes, I'll get a notification for an interesting story on the Medium app, tap it, opening the story in Medium, but then get interrupted, so I switch to another app, putting Medium in the background. If I'm especially busy, it may stay backgrounded like this for several hours, until I have time to read the story.

Unfortunately, what happens when I bring Medium to the front later is that it "resets" itself to a default landing page, making it difficult to find the story again (the notification is "cleared" by tapping it, so I don't have it to reopen the story.

This happens in other apps, too: I open a specific content item, background the app for some time, then returning to it, only to have my content item replaced by whatever default screen the app thinks I should want to look at.

Is there a way to tell these apps to just open right were I was and stop trying to "help" me so darn much?

I suspect it may have something to do with background refresh or whatever it's called… Thanks in advance.

Edit: Follow-up: Turning off "background refresh" for Medium did not resolve this issue. After leaving an article open in the background overnight, visiting the app this morning "reset" itself again to the home screen. There may be nothing for it.

This is due to the restrictions iOS places on app developers.

Apps are only allowed to stay open in the background for a few minutes (this saves RAM), so if the developer doesn't have the app save where you were last, the app will reset to its start page. So no, you can't do anything about this.

This is why you don't really need to close your apps in the app switcher.

use this func on AppDelegate
 func application(_ application: UIApplication, shouldSaveSecureApplicationState coder: NSCoder) -> Bool {
       return true
}
func application(_ application: UIApplication, shouldRestoreSecureApplicationState coder: NSCoder) -> Bool {
    return true
}


Linux' `ps f` (tree view) equivalent on OSX? How can I get a tree view like the one below on OSX?

vartec@some_server:~$ ps xf
PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
11519 ?        S      0:00 sshd: vartec@pts/0
11520 pts/0    Ss     0:00  \_ -bash
11528 pts/0    R+     0:00      \_ ps xf

To clarify, I'm mostly interested in the tree structure, not the extended information.

You can install the pstree command using either Homebrew (my personal favourite), MacPorts or Fink and you'll get a command-line, tree view of processes on your Mac.

With Homebrew installed, just run:

brew install pstree

then use it like pstree from the command line.

I made a different script that takes (should take?) all the arguments you can normally give to "ps" on OSX:

https://github.com/jhthorsen/snippets/blob/master/bin/ps

Example output:

$ ps Af
   PID TTY      STAT      TIME COMMAND
     1 ??       Ss   198:44.08 /sbin/launchd
   141 ??       Ss     2:40.76   \_ /usr/sbin/syslogd
   142 ??       Ss     6:54.11   \_ /usr/libexec/UserEventAgent (System)
   145 ??       Ss     0:32.48   \_ /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Uninstall.framework/Resources/uninstalld
   146 ??       Ss     1:12.84   \_ /usr/libexec/kextd
   147 ??       Ss    18:51.47   \_ /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/FSEvents.f
   148 ??       Ss     0:14.31   \_ /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MediaRemote.framework/Support/mediaremoted
   151 ??       Ss    59:43.39   \_ /usr/sbin/systemstats --daemon
   441 ??       S      0:05.39       \_ /usr/sbin/systemstats --logger-helper /private/var/db/systemstats
...

> ps Af -o ppid,pid,cpu,command
  PPID   PID CPU COMMAND
     0     1   0 /sbin/launchd
     1   141   0   \_ /usr/sbin/syslogd
     1   142   0   \_ /usr/libexec/UserEventAgent (System)
     1   145   0   \_ /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Uninstall.framework/Resources/uninstalld
     1   146   0   \_ /usr/libexec/kextd
     1   147   0   \_ /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/FSEvents.framework/Versi
     1   148   0   \_ /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MediaRemote.framework/Support/mediaremoted
     1   151   0   \_ /usr/sbin/systemstats --daemon
   151   441   0       \_ /usr/sbin/systemstats --logger-helper /private/var/db/systemstats


OCR software for handwritten notes I am looking for a way to recognize handwriting of scanned notes (in PDF format).

It doesn't have to be perfect, and it doesn't have to free, but before paying I would like to try it (even with just a single page).

It doesn't necessarily have to be a native Mac OS X application. I would be OK with an online application, or a Unix application to install or compile. In other words, anything that works somewhat decently would be OK.

I am also not necessarily looking for a perfect result. Even transforming my notes into a searchable PDF with just some of the text recognized would be better than nothing.

You could use Evernote for this (Free). Just import all of your PDF's as notes and after some time (you can speed this up by upgrading to a paid account), it will automatically process them and recognize the handwriting. You won't be able to extract the OCR text from the notes, but you can search for it.


iPad app to access Mac files? Is there an iPad app that that can open Mac files over WiFi on the iPad?

I'm looking for something like Dropbox, I really like the feature it has where you can open the files in Dropbox in other apps on the iPad. I need something like that, just for regular files that are not on Dropbox. Something like Air Video but sends the files to the appropriate application instead of just playing videos in the app.

To be clear, I'm not looking for Splashtop or a similar VNC app. I want to use native iPad apps to open these files.

I'm open to a jailbreak solution, too.

Answering this

  Is there an iPad app that that can open Mac files over WiFi on the
  iPad?

I bought a app called Files Connect on my iPad, I use it to access files over the Network to access shared folders on my Mac using my iPad and iPhone. It is universal app for iPhone/iPad.

It works also with Windows PCs, Dropbox and other services.

You can also use it to access your iPad files using the Mac/Pc (opposite way)

I bought for $5, This is looking too much as a ad (I'm not related to this company), so read description for details.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/files-connect/id404324302?mt=8

Both Vitim.us and Alesh have already pointed out some good apps.
Although, Gizmodo wrote an excellent summary about this topic where they list apps according to the media you want to access from your iPad.

Audio and video can be accessed using AirVideo or StreamToMe. If you want to access only documents, then GoodReader (like Alesh has said) is the way to go.

I suggest you take a look at the article and I'm sure you'll find your solution there!


Missing icons on macOS Sierra I'm on macOS Sierra and I have been losing icons randomly, as you can see below, the Adobe Illustrator folder does not look like it should.

This also occurs in the Dock:

FaceTime (left of iTunes) has no icon, this also occurs with numerous other applications such as Inkscape, Gimp, and a few others.

Please help!

I had to run the below commands to make my icons come back. It took a while to find, but it finally sorted everything.

sudo find /private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.iconservices -exec rm -rf {} \;
sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store
killall Dock

Command  Space
Type Monitor and select Activity Monitor.
Quit WindowServer process.
Then the session is closed, enter your credentials and all icons all ok now.


Mac book air Admin account slower than fresh brand new user account — I have tried a lot to fix I have a Mac book air 2017 running Catalina. I have noticed my admin account being a little slow. Safari launching slower and some other apps slower
I did a test and made a new admin user. I logged out of my account and logged in as that user. Everything is faster. Safari launches and renders pages faster and just feels snappier
I am not saying my computer is un-usable just not as fast as it could be
In order to try to fix problem I have tried the following

remove all launch agents in my user library folder
only Startup necessary software and remove any login items not neceassy
Deleted preferences folder in user library folder
reset safari cache and disable extensions
boot into recovery mode and repair disk
Boot into safe mode and test
Cleaning up hard drive and removing apps and files. I have 150gb free storage out of 500gb

Do you have any other ideas or is it reformat and rebuild time? I haven’t done a fresh install in 10 years and really want to avoid this

"Do you have any other ideas or is it reformat and rebuild time? I haven’t done a fresh install in 10 years and really want to avoid
this."

If the problem does not appear in a brand new user account, then there is absolutely no need to erase the disk and reinstall the OS. The OS works fine: only the user account is affected.
Some may suggest packing up and moving to a new user account. The trouble is that if you keep doing this every time you come up with a user-account problem, you'll have a succession of different user accounts, which may cause problems with backups, file ownership attributions, etc. And you'll be none the wiser.
The cause is something in the user's Library folder. It could be third-party software that's set to launch at startup, so test by disabling ALL of that. Don't leave any 'necessary' stuff.
You've deleted the entire user Preference folder, which is overkill. I would test whether things improve after you remove the folder, and then restore it if they don't. Move on to the next folder.

Being slow refers to memory (CPU), not so much to storage or disk errors. Mac is a CPU-intensive OS because of Apple’s belief that ‘unused CPU is wasted CPU’. CPU is gobbled up by running apps, processes, agents, and utilities, especially by pesky 3rd party software (how I hate Adobe! It’s been eating at my CPU even after uninstalling their software, until I manually removed all Adobe’s hidden agents). Therefore, it’s only reasonable that a new account you created is faster - it has less apps, less processes running, less legacy agents and cache stored away in hidden folders.
You can hardly fix this without erasing stuff, but try at least uninstalling apps you don’t use, remove all but necessary browser extensions, don’t run more than one or two apps at a time without quitting them before you open other apps.
Try some tricks from the following article, such as removing all Desktop files, disabling dock animation, removing all but main apps from your dock and using launchpad instead.
https://uk.crucial.com/articles/mac-users/how-to-speed-up-your-mac-system
Use Activity Monitor to track CPU-intensive processes. Quit unresponsive or processes that are using too much of your CPU, and be generally aware of what your system is doing. For example, if Siri is re-indexing your drive, you can write off a few hours - it’s a very CPU-intensive process and it’s best to just let it run (don’t lock the screen or power off) than to battle with it. If there are some agents that you don’t recognize and don’t need (always double check by googling so that you don’t quit essential native Apple agents), not only quit, but find them in your Library and bin them for good (like I did with multiple Adobe agents).
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/activity-monitor/welcome/mac
I’ve had the same issue and I also dreaded erasing my disk clean and reinstalling, but it’s not as painful as it seems when you store all your files in the cloud and so you only have to resync them once you reinstall. You could use a backup drive and this free app to easily back up your user folder, then fully erase your disk and reinstall macOS. Then you could transfer your user folder from your backup drive onto your newly installed drive, either all or only select folders (only applications to avoid finding and reinstalling your apps, or only library to preserve your settings).
https://macdaddy.io/duplicate/
But I wouldn’t advice to backup anything. I would only use cloud (Dropbox or OneDrive) or an external drive to sync your files, everything else, start from a clean slate. What helped me is changing my thinking from “what I have to remove” to “what I have to keep”. Instead of going through all my files and deciding what to remove, I thought and selected what I absolutely have to keep. If I didn’t think about it, or if it’s been sitting there for two years but I never touched it, I don’t need it.
Slow Mac is a struggle. Stay strong!


Late 2012 Imac 27'' constant beach ball loading and slow downs I just bought myself an iMac 27'' late 2012 model.

I am constantly getting beach balls and the computer slows to a crawl taking anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute to get back to regular speeds.

My normal programs are:

Rubymine
Parallels Desktop
Chrome
Skype

I've used a laptop with less specs than this iMac and it never had these terrible hiccups. What can I do verify what is causing the issue?

8GB is more than enough for what I'm using - is it just the Apple-tax that requires me to have even more ram?

It might help to examine how the machine's resource usage looks inside of Activity Monitor...Are the CPU cores maxed out? How about RAM usage - is there any green showing in the pie chart? Lastly - is the Disk Activity tab showing excessive write rates constantly occurring?

Does the performance of the machine increase when you quit out of particular applications (namely Parallels?)

A defective hard drive could cause slowness, but this may be accompanied by other symptoms (crashing, audible clicking, logging of I/O errors). It may be prudent to run the Apple Hardware Test just to confirm tht the hardware is in good shape.

I would encourage you to download etrecheck:
http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

Then in Etrecheck, you will see

/Library/extensions from 3rd parties
Startup items from 3rd parties
Startup daemons from 3rd parties
Internet plugins from 3rd parties
Preference panes from 3rd parties

Usually, Some pieces of programs can interfere with the Mac OS. In my case, in 100% of cases, issues are related to 3rd parties (non-Apple)


Safari can't connect to the server "localhost" Okay, I am a beginner with all this, so don't expect me know much. Let me know if this is the wrong place to ask this. What tags should I have used? THANKS a lot for your time.

Background

I have a CGI script saved in /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables.

I used to be able to run the script using the URL: http://localhost/cgi-bin/filename,

Problem

But now, Safari can't connect to the server?!  Once or twice it begins to load then stays for a long time and eventually the same error comes up.

What could the problem be?

Extra Q's

I found my apache2 folder in /private/log/apache2 should this be moved?

Can I somehow run this script on something else without a server? Terminal works, but it is too hard to read.

It seems like you are using Mac's built-in server and maybe somewhere along the line, web sharing was disabled.

Go to your System Preferences and enable Web Sharing.

To be sure httpd has started do what @Kerri mentioned in the comments

ps -eaf | grep httpd

which will display all processes that contain httpd as well as the Process ID

if you only get something like the following

501 22299 22030   0   0:00.00 ttys001    0:00.00 grep httpd

grep is the only process running referencing httpd

At this point try stopping and restarting the server manually

sudo httpd -k stop
sudo httpd -k restart

Look also into the Console.app log and filter to see what information you can get from there.

If it is enabled you should get the following on pointing to localhost within a browser

  It works!

So far so good, the server is running.

Now to navigate to the cgi-bin folder, if you used the scripts before then it should be mapped already in your configuration.

You could get

  Forbidden

  You don't have permission to access
  /cgi-bin/ on this server.

or an Internal Server Error if you went straight to the script

and you can chmod 755 the script and that should give you the correct permission to run it.

You can also check the access and error logs to see what's up

/var/log/apache2/access_log
/var/log/apache2/error_log

/var is the symbolic link to private/var

if you created a username.conf file in mountain lion delete it. After doing so restart apache and all should be well :)


iOS Software Update over cellular data How can I software update over cellular data? I've got enough data on my SIM but when go to update my iPad to iOS 8, it requires Wi-Fi. I do not have a router.

Apple doesn't allow major iOS updates over cellular. You can update from 10.3.1 to 10.3.2 over LTE, but not from 10.2 to 10.3.
This is not a technical limitation of cell data or wifi, per se, but rather a policy limitation (though some carriers have limits of how big individual files transmitted over their networks can be). Major OS updates can run into the gigabyte range, and while many users have multi-gig or unlimited data plans, not all users do - so updates above a given size are disallowed, per manufacturer policy, from downloading over cellular.
If you hotspot your phone and download the update to your laptop, then run the install via iTunes, you can get around it. Or if you find a wifi connection elsewhere (that won't cut you off for excessive data use (as some free/public ones can/will)).

Side note:
It's - generally - fastest to do OS updates via iTunes from your computer, because the update does not have to download to your phone, then extract, then install, then clean up after itself (especially important to consider if you only have 3G free on your device, but the update download size is 4GB: the update will likely still install if you do it via iTunes, because it will be overwriting existing files (along with removing some and adding some) on the phone, using your laptop/desktop as its workspace for extracting the update archive).

Go to Settings> iTunes & App Store> UPDATES(on)> Use Cellular Data


Dictionaries on iOS 9 not working I just updated to iOS 9, and I noticed that the built-in dictionaries, I previously used, aren't working. I had used American English, British English, and Apple Dictionary. Now, when I try to define any word, I get a "No definition found" error. The dictionaries I previously used show a blue circle (while all the others show the cloud download icon).

Sounds like a bug to me. Not even iOS is completely immune to them, even after a long public beta period. So, not a lot that you can do other than wait for iOS 9.0.1 and hope that it will fix that issue with the dictionary.

I was also facing the same issue...just go to Settings->General->Reset->Reset All Settings. This will solve your problem.


Export pdf annotations only using preview? I use Preview on OS X and GoodReader on the iPad for reading and annotating pdfs. GoodReader allows me to 'view summary' which is a plain text list of all highlighted sections and comments added to the pdf.

Preview allows you to view annotations in a sidebar but I can't find a way to export them. I really want to create a .txt file of just the pdf's annotations.

Does anyone know of a way of doing this, either with Preview or another app whose annotations can be viewed on GoodReader and vice versa?

I'll second that answer. I'm doing the same with PDF Expert instead of GoodReader. It is really important that you do the conversion in Skim on a COPY of the original PDF, as otherwise the PDF expert (or GoodReader, I assume) will lose the annotations, once converted (e.g., if you have your PDFs in Dropbox, which you then open either on the iPad or Mac). There is a slightly more elegant solution though. It's trivial but it avoids making a copy of the PDF:

Open the annotated PDF in Skim, convert to Skim notes, export notes to text or RTF, an then close Skim without saving. Your original PDF with notes will stay unconverted (and thus still annotated for GoodReader), but you will have your notes and highlights exported and saved.

As I said, trivial...

Well, you can always hit Cmd Z or Edit > Undo. Same thing.


iPhone dock connector problems, with and without accessories I started to experience problems with my iPhone that seem to be related to the dock connector.

Upon plugging my iPhone into my (officially supported) car stereo, I started to get the message  "This accessory is not supported by iPhone" on the screen.  Didn't think much of it as I only use it for charging purposes, and that still worked so I ignored it.  Then I bought a small ANT+ dongle, which is a little accessory you plug into the dock connector to allow your phone to receive data from various health/fitness devices like heart rate monitor, and cycle sensors etc.  It produces the same error message every time I plug it in, and the apps that use the dongle will not recognise it.

The dongle does officially support my hardware and OS level. I've checked that it is not broken by plugging it into an iPhone 5, an iPad 3 and an iPod of some description, none of which showed the error.  The supported apps find the device on the iPad, the iPhone 5 does not have the apps installed but offers to do so as soon as I plug it in, so I know the dongle is working correctly.

In addition to the above, when nothing is plugged into the dock connector, it still occassionally thinks that something is, resulting in a muted phone.  When it's in this state I am not able to hear anything or change any volume settings (music playback or ringer volume) with the physical keys. Going into the Music app shows that it thinks it's outputting the music to the dock connector.

Why is this accessory not working on my iPhone, and how can I get it working?  What causes my iPhone to think that it's docked when it isn't?

This commonly occurs when there is an issue with your dock connector.  It is likely dirty, obstructed in some way, or possibly even broken with a bent pin or something.  Very often this is not apparent, because with 30 pins to play with, chances are most of the time you only need the ones for charging and USB data transfer, leaving the rest unused such that you will not notice if they start working sub optimally.

There are 3 ways I would try to fix this, in order of most likely to fix:

Clear it out

Your first step is to check for any obvious blockage.  If  you have a can of compressed air, you can try to blow any debris out.  If you don't, then using a fine non metallic scraper (a plastic toothpick is ideal, a wooden one may leave small fibers behind) carefully clean out what you can - even if it looks clean you will be surprised how much crap and fluff you can scrape out. Take care to blow any debris out of the phone, and not into it - i.e. hold it upright and get at it from underneath, don't sit it upside down and work from the top

Clean it up

If there is no obvious obstruction then the problem may be more subtle, a coating on one or more of the pins that is preventing a neat conductive contact, or is grounding a pin against another one for example - perhaps there has been some contact with a liquid in the past etc.  You need to clean the pins to get rid of this.  You will need a couple of things things - 1) some cleaning agent, 2) a lint free cloth/piece of sponge, or an old toothbrush.

For a cleaning agent, 99% isopropyl is perfect, but if you don't have that kicking around you could try a very small quantity of the neatest and purest alcoholic drink you have in the house - I've used Vodka which is by and large 50/50 alcohol and water.  Don't use anything flavoured or anything that it likely to have anything other than alcohol and water in it!  Especially sugars or salt!.

Using a very small amount of your cleaning agent, and keeping the phone upright so any drips fall out, and not into the phone, lightly brush or wipe the dock connector, taking care not to be rough enough to disturb the pins out of alignment.  I've used a small piece of synthetic sponge and prodded it about with the same toothpick I used earlier.

Hit it

If this doesn't work, then the issue could still be a physical obstruction, although it may be beyond the dock connector and more internal.  Short of taking the phone to bits, there is not a lot you can do, and whilst you cannot clean the inside, you can try to dislodge anything that's stuck by using a combination of lightly tapping the phone on all 4 sides whilst playing about with the vibrate functions for alarms etc.

Using the first 2 methods above I solved the "Accessory not supported problem", but still had the intermittent docking issue.

Assuming I could not fix that one, I went to turn on Vibrate alerts (which I had previously turned off) as a workaround, only to find that after playing with all the vibrate "tones" etc it magically fixed itself!

Note 1 It's possible that the issue is not with the connector on your phone, but on your device/cable - you can try all the above on the cable end too if doing it on your phone does not yield results.
Note 2 If your device is failing to charge, or will only charge from a certain cable or dock, then the same fix potentially applies.

I have an iPhone 4S and I had the issue where it stopped connecting to any plg in device. I tried the cleaning, which did no harm, but then I messed around with the vibrate settings and it cleared immediately.


How do I create a groups OS X Mavericks Contacts app that remains local to my machine? When creating a new group in the OS X Mavericks version of the Contacts apps the group is automatically synchronized to iCloud. I'd like to keep this group local to just the machine where I created it.

How can I make a group that stays local to the machine and does not sync to my iCloud account?

Open Contacts
For the On My Mac account, click the + button to add a new group.

Enter a group name and press Enter.

You can’t. Mavericks removes SyncServices for local syncing and forces you to place your data in the cloud.


How do I delete songs on my iphone using Windows version of iTunes? I have an iPhone 8+ and use the Windows version of iTunes. There are all these songs my son purchased thru iTunes showing up on my iPhone. How do I get these listings off my iPhone?
Note: The songs are not physically on the iPhone, but listed as downloadable. I don't want them listed at all.

There are two ways to see only your downloaded songs, at least on iOS 13 and newer:
Method 1

Launch the Settings app.
Scroll down to the "Music" section and click on it.
Deselect the "Show all purchases" option.

This should now only show your local downloads.
Method 2

Launch the Music app on your iPhone and click on the "Library" icon in the bottom menu bar.
In the top right corner, click on "Edit".
A customizable list with checkmark circles should appear. One of the categories that you can select is "Downloaded", which – as the name suggests – shows only the songs that are stored locally on your phone. You'll also see another category called "Songs". This category shows all of your songs (both in the cloud and the ones stored locally on your phone).
Uncheck the "Songs" category and check the "Downloaded" category.
Click "OK" in the top right corner of the screen to close the list. You should now see only your downloaded songs whenever you click on the "Downloaded" category.

And if you want to see all your purchases once more (including those that haven't been downloaded), you can simply select the "Songs" category instead of the "Downloaded" category – that is if you haven't disabled the "Show all purchases" option in Settings.

The Apple Support page shows how to hide the purchases in your purchase history. This should hide even the iCloud streaming copy.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208167#hide
This one covers how to delete the downloaded copies:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204343


How can I make Safari cmd+number shortcut switch tabs instead of opening the bookmark associated with that number? I'm used to switching tabs with cmd+x where x is a number and takes me to tab x in firefox and pretty much every other browser I've ever used.
I like safari's speed and would like to try it a bit, but the cmd+x shortcut is burned in my brain and every time I use safari I end up screwing up.
I'd like to know if its possible to change this behavior, because this simple thing is a stopper for me.

In case you are coming from Chrome and want to use

cmd+[0-9] for switching tabs (instead of cycling through your preset top sites) take a look at:

github.com/rs/SafariTabSwitching

  Safari Tab Switching is a Safari SIMBL plugin which allow switching between tabs using Cmd+1-9.

Update:

Safari Version 9.0.2 (El Capitan) has native support for this:

Yes ctrl + (0-9) by using this shortcut you can navigate across multiple tabs in windows


What iPhone apps can't you live without? What are your "must-have" iPhone or iPod touch apps—the ones you can't live without? (Figuratively speaking, I hope.) Please omit apps that come pre-installed.

Rules

One app per answer.
Use this format for the first two lines of your answer:
## [app name](link to website)
[App Store](link to appstore)
Include short description.
Check for duplicates before adding new answers.
If you find a duplicate, vote it down and encourage its poster to upvote the original entry instead (and remove the dupe).

Please exclude iPad-only apps from here; there's Great iPad Apps for those.

Disclaimer: I know this type of question is controversial. However, great many people do find that properly implemented and curated CW polls can be useful. (If you are one of those who do not, could you simply consider ignoring this?)

Dropbox

App Store

Conveniently access files in your Dropbox on the go.

LogMeIn Ignition

App Store ($29.99)

Remote control in which you can see the screen with free subscriptions and desktop versions. iPhone app costs quite a bit, but it's the best remote control for iPhone I've seem, and probably the first too. Works over web or within same intranet wifi.


Cannot send iMessage from MacBook Pro I have been using my MacBook Pro for nearly 2 years. I have no problem using iMessages both on my iPhone and Mac. However, today, I can't seem to be able to send any messages out from my Mac. There is no problem on my phone. Also, I cannot use FaceTime on my Mac.

I reviewed through the internet for some solutions, but nothing seems to work, such as deleting files, changing setting on the Flash Player.

How can I resolve this issue?

It has something to do with not having a serial number on your Mac (after motherboard repair or so). You need to go to an Apple Store to have it “flashed” back. iMessage and FaceTime won't work without the serial.


Sharing iTunes account with separate game center accounts We have a family iTunes account. My son wants to have his own Clash of Clans game on his iPod, so we created his own Apple ID and he logged into Game Center from his iPod with the new ID to download the game. However, it automatically reverts back to my husband’s game and the family account.

How do we get it to download under his new ID?

You will need to check the settings app and sign out of the App Store for the account you don't want to purchase things. There are about 5 places you can enter an Apple ID in the settings so that you can mix one app for music and apps, another for home sharing, another for iMessage, another for iCloud and another for Game Center.

If nothing else works, try deleting the game and reinstalling it.


iPhone 4S keeps old numbers in Messages The numbers that are no longer in my contacts still keep popping up when I try to compose a new message.

Why is this happening? Is there a way to purge the contact list so no already-deleted-contact remains?

Assuming you have iOS 7 (now) I can provide you the steps on how to remove Recent contacts in the Messages.app.

Open Messages.app
Start composing new message
Once the list starts showing up, press the blue 'i' icon next to the number.
Press the redline Delete from recent
You're done, repeat these steps for the contacts you don't want to show up anymore.

EDIT: Community bumped this thread up making me answer it because I never check the dates. I hope I can still help anyone  out with this answer.

Power the phone off and then on again. That should clear out the bug.


What would I lose if I needed to reinstall from a Time Machine backup? Is there a list somewhere of the areas of the hard drive that aren't backed up by Time Machine? And does reinstalling from Time Machine install everything from the backup or just parts of it?

I like to tweak things a lot, like customizing the system Apache server and installing stuff into /usr/local (Max Howell's Homebrew, for instance), so I'd like to double check what areas I might lose if I needed to reinstall from a Time Machine backup (whole disk image backups seem a bit overboard for my tastes).

Things which they were not restored and they were crucial, was:

MySQL Databases
VMWare Fusion virtual machines

The default backup exclusion list, can be found in:

/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist

Do not forget to check your excluding folders on the prefs as well ;)

You might loose lower level stuff in /usr/local when reinstalling using a Time Machine backup.

I know from my own experience that Macports does not get restored (installed in /opt/local).


Do Apple retail stores allow trade-ins? Is it possible to trade my 2009 MacBook Pro for store credit or something?

Yes, Apple has a Reuse and Recycling Program where you can get a Gift Card for the value of your computer.  Of course, what value they might consider it to have is another question.

because to get the information from the old computer to the new after mailing in the computer would not be possible, and to buy the new one before mailing in the old would mean the "store credit" could not be used on that purchase.


How can I create a folder in the current directory in list view? I browse to a folder, then expand through a directory tree to find the file I'm looking for.  Now I want to create a folder at the current location within that tree.

"New Folder" from the menu creates the menu in the top-level directory instead of the current directory.
Right-clicking doesn't give any way to create a folder "in-place" - ie with reference to the file or directory I currently have clicked/highlighted.

Simplified example (thanks soulshined):

/Users/user/Downloads/
/Users/user/Downloads/Pictures
/Users/user/Downloads/Pictures/pic1.jpg
/Users/user/Downloads/Pictures/pic2.jpg
/Users/user/Downloads/Pictures/pic3.jpg
/Users/user/Downloads/Pictures/pic4.jpg
/Users/user/Downloads/Pictures/pic5.jpg

The finder window is opened on the /Users/user/Downloads directory, but I have used the tree-expanders to be looking at the files in .../Downloads/Pictures.

I want to add a folder under Pictures, but irrespective of how I invoke it, the new directory will always be created under Downloads.

(Obviously in this example it would be trivial to move it, but imagine the folder is a byzantine corporate shared directory tree,...)

Open the folder that you want to create a new folder in, then File > New Folder or Shift-Command-N.

OR

You have first to double-click the directory within which you want to create the new folder. Once you are inside, right-click and select "new directory".

The problem is that List View displays the contents of several folders at once, but it is only 'in' the top level folder that is listed in the Titlebar. The New Folder command behaves the same as in other views, for the sake of consistency. (That's Apple's take on it, whether you agree or not.)
Fo those who want it, I've create a very simple Automator Quick Action that seems to work when you right click on a folder in List View.

on run {input, parameters}

    tell application "Finder"

        set thefolder to (input as text)

        make new folder at thefolder with properties {name:"New Folder"}
    end tell

    return input
end run


Getting error in Terminal when typing Passwd *Username* I’ve been trying to change the root password via Terminal on macOS. I launched Terminal by holding cmd + S while booting, which logged me automatically in as root without password.

When I type in Passwd root or Passwd and then hit enter, I just get an error message that says

  the daemon encountered an error processing request

two times in a row. If a log into my user and then try that it works perfectly but I want to change it from the “cmd+S” menu.

To use passwd in single-user mode or otherwise make changes to accounts on the system, you need to load Open Directory.

launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.opendirectoryd.plist

I found it on the Internet. The worst thing is that nearly every Mac is hack able with that


How do I open Outlook .msg files on my iPad I work with a Document Management System that has my Outlook email archive stored as .msg files...  which is nice and all, but I can't get my iPad to actually open them up properly.

A search through the App Store results in two apps that claim to support this:

MSG File Viewer ($0.99) - doesn't seem to associate itself properly with .MSG files in Safari/SkyDrive/etc.
Klammer ($0.99 + $0.99 in-app purchase) - shows up in Open With... dialog, but shows up empty in the app.

However, neither seems to associate itself with .MSG files in Safari/SkyDrive/etc . Also, support for inline images and formatting seems sketchy at best.

I also noted that if I forward a .MSG file in an email, Mail will sometimes open it properly by converting it to .EML on the fly. I just can't figured out how to use that to open .MSG files on any other location, though.

Are there any other solutions I'm not aware of? It would be really nice to be able to access these files on the road.

You don't need an additional app. You can either sync your email messages to your iPad from your computer - instructions are in the user's guide as well as here:

  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1386

or you can set up your iPad to connect directly to your email provider - instructions also in the user's guide and here:

  http://www.apple.com/support/ipad/mail/

If your email service is an Exchange server, I'd recommending setting up your iPad to talk directly to the server. Then your mail, calendar and contacts, if you wish it so, will synchronize automatically without you having to sync with your computer.

The best solution I have found for this problem other than trying the .msg viewers is to convert the .msg files to .pdf because they can be read.  I don't know if this is a possible solution for the user as his issue is that they are in a document management system.  If the DMS can convert to .pdf that could be a solution.


Accessing iOS iCloud app data from a Mac? I want to peek around where I'm not supposed to, specifically, I want to have a look at what "documents & data" is being stored in iCloud by some of my apps. I can see them in Manage Storage on the iCloud preference pane, but not in ~/Library/Mobile Documents or anywhere else on the system. The app is iOS only, does this mean that the Mac doesn't store this data, or have I just not found it yet?

Try this:

Go to the ~/Library/Mobile Documents folder. Type anything in the search field in your Finder window. Make sure that Mobile Documents is selected in the Search bar, not This Mac.

Next, click on the + icon, and choose Kind is Document. Go back to the search field and erase what you typed. Now all your iCloud documents will display.

Click on Save, and check Add to Sidebar to add this search to your Finder window sidebars.

Note: one submission said to type a period (.), and, while this starts the search, this may not find all your documents if extensions are not visible. So it's best to start a search, then choose Kind is Document and delete the search.

Go to the ~/Library/Mobile Documents folder on mac.


Do I need to keep apps on my Mac with iCloud I have a MacBook Air with limited disk space as well as an iPad and an iPhone. With iCloud, do I need to keep the apps in iTunes on the MacBook anymore? When I try to delete them all in iTunes by clicking on the Apps link on the left side of iTunes and then selecting all of the apps and right clicking delete, a message appears saying that the apps will also be deleted from my iPad and iPhone. Is this really the case with iCloud or is it safe to delete them from the MacBook and free up the disk space? I think these files are stored in a folder called Mobile Applications on the MacBook.

As Adam has said, you should disable syncing applications and yes it is safe.

However if an app gets pulled from the App Store by Apple, which you have purchased but do not have currently install on your iOS device, you will not be able to get it back from iCloud. Whereas if you have it saved on your computer in iTunes you can get the app back by syncing.

iCloud doesn't actually back up the apps on your iPhone, it only stores your data for that app, if your restore from iCloud then it will download the apps clean from the App Store and then insert your data from iCloud, so that it appears that the entire app has been backed up.

If they backed up the entire app, for every user of an app there would be that many copies of that app on iCloud which is hugely wasteful.

So don't delete apps that are no longer on the app store else you won't be able to get them back. And if you have an app that looks like it will get pulled shortly (e.g. the app has tethering hidden inside of it) keep it on your computer. But most apps you are fine deleting and just relying on iCloud.

No, after a few years or even months you can't download your apps from the App Store (iCloud) if they decide not to sell them anymore.


Display a pixel-for-pixel copy of a Mac-created Keynote presentation on iPad Is there a way to get a pixel for pixel copy of a Mac-created Keynote presentation onto an iPad to present on an external display? The iOS Keynote app often has great trouble in importing Mac-Keynote documents (lacks 16x9 resolution, fonts, etc). I don't want to convert the presentation to a PDF, as this removes animations/videos/etc. Converting to a Quicktime file also does not work, as there isn't any way to manually advance a Quicktime "slide" on the iPad.

It's quite probable that there is no solution, but I'm eager to hear suggestions I may have overlooked.

Staying with the keynote format, no. I you export to a QuickTime movie, you will have the best chance to preserve the slide deck as it was on the Mac when saving it alone doesn't work.

You can only work around this by getting the mac pixels on the iPad since this appears to be an inherent limitation of the iOS app as written today.

Have you tried using Air Display to add the iPad as a second monitor and tell Keynote to present on the iPad? The company does awesome work and like any screen sharing over a network, there is latency and/or slight rendering artifacts, but it's better than other apps in that space as any I've seen.

Use iWork.com embedding  :)

Since January (Keynote 5.0.5), iWork lets you embed your published presentation and play them in Safari (link contains a demo). Follow the instructions there!

Note that not all transitions will be available, so it won't be a “pixel-for-pixel” in all cases, but I guess it's the best alternative we can get.

Note: I have not tested this with an iPad (don't have any around), but seeing all that's required is a recent version of Safari, that should work.


Can you upload photos directly to iCloud website from a PC (w/o iCloud for Windows SW)? iCloud website, Photos section doesn't have any options to upload photos. I was able to upload picture files to iCloud Drive so hopefully they show up in Photos app on iPhone? I was helping a friend move some stuff on a Windows PC at work & visiting the site via Firefox. I cannot load iCloud for Windows on my work PC.

EDIT:
It was a new iPhone & friend didn't have it with him. I had downloaded photos+contacts from his old flip phone that I was trying to upload to iCloud website. See my answer below as I believe the new-ness of the phone/iCloud/Apple-account was the cause & I overlooked that.

Log into iCloud.com, open the Photos web app, and you should see an Upload to iCloud icon in the upper right corner.

Here is what you need:

Before you get started, you need to sign in to iCloud with your Apple ID. Just follow the setup instructions for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch or Mac. Then follow these steps to turn on iCloud Photos on your PC with Windows 7 or later.

Turn on iCloud Photos

Download iCloud for Windows.
Open iCloud for Windows.
Next to Photos, click Options.
Select iCloud Photo Library.
Click Done, then click Apply.
Turn on iCloud Photos on all of your Apple devices.

Upload your photos and videos to iCloud Photos

You can upload your photos and videos from your PC to iCloud Photos when you follow these steps:

Open a File Explorer window.
Under Favorites, click iCloud Photos.
Click Upload photos and videos.
Choose the photos and videos you want to upload and click Open.

You can also drag and drop photos and videos from your PC into the Uploads folder in iCloud Photos. You can view the photos and videos you uploaded in the Photos app on iCloud.com and on all your Apple devices.

Download your photos and videos from iCloud Photos

New photos and videos you add to iCloud Photos will automatically download to your PC. You can also download your collection by year when you follow these steps:

Open a File Explorer window.
Under Favorites, click iCloud Photos.
Click Download photos and videos.
Choose the photos and videos you want to download and click Download.
Your photos and videos download to the location you set in iCloud Photos Options.


How to disable Command-Control-Power shortcut? I frequently use Command-Option-Power shortcut to send my Macbook to sleep (especially since closing the lid when I have external monitor doesn't trigger sleep).

Unfortunately, this shortcut is very similar to Command-Control-Power which invokes cold reset of my Mac. I quite often accidentally press Command-Control-Power instead of Command-Option-Power.

My question would be: is there a way to disable Command-Control-Power completely (i.e. just use long power button press when I want to do cold reset)?

Not easily. The keys trigger the SMC directly as far as I can discern, so you'd need to rewrite the firmware to make this change.

You can test this by powering off your Mac (or waiting until you next mistakenly command this) and hold the option key. While it's in the boot manager, only firmware is running and that key combination is effective.

I'm also not aware of any OS X modification that would allow this, but asking people that make and use Karabiner might yield either another opinion or confirmation that my estimate of the difficulty is correct.

When I had a problem with the cmd+Q shortcut, I went to system preferences, keyboard, shortcuts and changed the help menu shortcut to cmd+Q.


Issue with deleting a Mac account through system preferences I have a desktop mac with multiple users and I would like to erase just one user from the computer but when I open system preferences and click on the accounts area, the minus sign to delete the account is grey and cannot be clicked. I checked all the other users on the computer and they are the same way. Everything is unlocked and I have the administrator password so I shouldn't have any problems but I am unable to click the delete key. Is there another way to delete a user account without damaging the computer or any other accounts?

In order to add/delete accounts you have to unlock first:

which will prompt you for an Administrator account/password. Once entered successfully you can select and delete any user not currently logged in.

You said you have an administrator password but you have to be signed in to an account that currently has administrator privileges. Only an administrator can delete accounts.

Make sure you are an administrator and the account you are trying to delete is NOT the one you are signed in with.


Is there a way to see the time that a photo was taken on the iPhone? Sometimes I took a photo using my iPhone, and then later on, I wonder how long I have been there at that location, I thought of checking when the last photo was taken, and can tell the time when I arrived, but I found it wasn't easily possible to see what time the photo was taken.

Is there really a way to see the time that photo was taken, be it 1 hour and 20 minutes ago, without using any third party app and without importing the photo to a computer?  I thought this might be a simple photo info thing that might be invoked by some easy way?

You are not missing anything, the iPhone has no mechanism to see that information natively. However, if you search for EXIF on the App Store, there are a few (some free) apps that will happily do that in the device itself.

You must note that, due to the way iTunes work, pictures coming from iTunes will not have their metadata associated. Sad but true.

My Photo date will allow you to do that.


How to stop Mail from forwarding all emails from one Gmail to another I have 2 Gmail accounts. When I tried adding one of them to the Mail app, something really annoying happened. The other Gmail account keeps receiving forwarded emails from this account. All emails in this added account were being forwarded there and I did not know how to stop that. I checked the Forwarding and POP/IMAP settings in both Gmails but there's no forwarding configured. I disabled POP, too. I tried disconnecting the two Gmail accounts in Google's setting, but problem still not solved. I don't understand, by now this account should know nothing about the other, but when I add it to the Mail app, the crazy forwarding started again.

Just to be clear, I only added one of the two Gmails to the Mail app, so the Mail app should not know anything about the other account. Then the wrong must be in Google's side, but I disconnected them and checked every setting, still have no clue why they still are linked somehow. I did nothing strange before, just having this two Gmail accounts and trying to add one to the Mail app, so I guess it shouldn't be a rare problem. But there seemed to be no relevant solutions when I googled. Could someone help me with this? Does anyone have a similar problem?

I had the same problem and once I unchecked (in the email I was receiving the forwards into) that I could send from the other email as an alias the problem stopped and the forwarding ceased.


How do I stop my phone from turning off the display whenever I put my finger over the phone speaker? I have an iPhone 6, and recently I've found out that if you put your finger on the thing next to the front camera, the display will turn black. but I can't find a setting to turn it off. Anyone know where it is? Or if I can? This isn't just calls it's anytime.

In this case, it was just a bug. All you need to do to fix this is to restart your iPhone and it should be fixed. Thanks to Apple support.

Maybe turn off facial recognition because the proximity sensor won't be looking for your face. I don't know however


Script iTunes to prepend Season and Episode number (padded) to episode title I'm not knowledgeable about scripting, so I'll be upfront about that. I've been doing management with Doug's Scripts for over a decade, but the one that would be most useful (Append to Selected Tag) doesn't offer the correct fields to adjust the information I want to change.

I would like to prepend the season number and the (padded 2 digit) episode number to the beginning of episode names in my library (not the file name!), so I get something like 101 Pilot, 102 Deep Throat, 103 Squeeze, etc., in my smart playlists for using on AppleTV (because the newer AppleTVs running tvOS do not show that additional information in the playlist view, and it's easy to lose your place in long running series).

I have used Subler and iFlicks, and both can handle prepending the information and adding to iTunes going forward, but if I drop my older library files to those apps, some of my comments, groupings, etc., get erased using their update metadata options (in iFlicks 2, the artwork also gets changed, and I have to handle each season separately to change it back), and neither handle extended episodes or DVD vs Aired orderings well when starting from a clean slate.

I'm looking for a script that I can use to select entire playlists or shows and only changes the one tag (the episode name) using info from other tags that I already have populated (the original episode name, season number, and episode number) and that can pad the episode number 0-9 to 2 digits. Can someone point me in the right direction?

I think this will do it for you:

use AppleScript version "2.4" -- Yosemite (10.10) or later
use scripting additions
--
-- Start by selecting the shows in a playlist.
-- Don't select the playlist. Select the Shows.

tell application "iTunes"
    set theShowList to the selection
    repeat with aShow in theShowList
        -- get the information we need
        set theSeasonNumber to season number of aShow
        set theEpisodeNumber to episode number of aShow
        set theName to name of aShow
        --
        -- pad the episode number to two digits
        set thePaddedEpisodeNumber to "0" & theEpisodeNumber as string
        set theTwoDigitEpisodeNumber to characters -2 thru -1 of thePaddedEpisodeNumber as string
        --
        -- assemble the new name
        set theNewName to theSeasonNumber & theTwoDigitEpisodeNumber & " " & theName as string
        --
        -- set the new name
        set the name of aShow to theNewName
    end repeat
end tell

The script could be cleaned up and made more efficient but I wrote it this way so it was easier to follow.

Be sure to select the shows, not the playlist. It doesn't work otherwise.

While experimenting with this I noticed that some TV shows have episode numbers that are three digits already. That would be a problem for this script. FYI.

This was done with iTunes 12.9.5.5, macOS Mojave 10.14.6.

Here are before and after pictures. You're going to have to zoom in.

I have a Python script called "tag_tv" that does all of this work, outside of iTunes, but fully compatible with all of the Apple products.  Beyond the basic string manipulations (season, episode, title), the key is calling a piece of SW found here: https://github.com/TechSmith/mp4v2

Unfortunately, I haven't seen any binaries for this, so you need to build it yourself.  I've you've ever done ANY building of open-source SW (configure, make, gcc, etc.) this one should be easy.

This is from my Python script, but you can see what you're able to set with that mp4 SW:

cmd = "mp4tags -i \"tvshow\" -S \"" + show + "\" -n " + seasonNumber + " -M " + episodeNumber + " -o " + episodeID + " -s \"" + title + "\" -y " + date + " -m \"" + desc + "\" -P " + artwork + " " + file

If you could compile this SW, you could easily script this in Shell, Python, AppleScript, etc.  This is more efficient for me than trying to use one of the GUI tools you mentioned for doing the tagging.


Starting `pf` Firewall at System Startup I have a particular machine that I keep buttoned down very tight. Only a few specific ports/protocols are allowed. I have a pretty basic set of rules that work very well.
While working on a different problem, I realized I could add a few more rules and button things down even tighter by specifying specific ports on specific network interfaces. So for example, on one network interface, only access to 80 & 443 are allowed, no mail or vpn access to that interface.
So here is what one of the old rules looked like:
pass in quick proto tcp from any to any port { 80 443 } keep state

And this is what one of the new rules looks like:
pass in quick proto tcp from any to en1 port { 80 443 } keep state

The difference is subtle but I'm specifying a specific network interface, not just in to 'any'. This particular server has three connections to the internet.
The problem is... pf will no longer start up right at boot with these new rules. When I specify the interface, my pf startup script fails to start pf. And I have to do it manually through the terminal.
At first glance, the problem seems like my script is probably just trying to use network interfaces that aren't up yet. But I'm already waiting for them to come up. Here is my pf startup script, it has been working perfectly for years, until this rule change.
#!/bin/bash
ipconfig waitall
/sbin/pfctl -e -f /etc/pf.conf

With the new rules, nothing gets loaded at system startup when this runs. But if I run the same pfctl command once the system is up, it loads the rules and starts the firewall just fine.
I modified my script to save multiple copies of ifconfig so I could see how the status of the two interfaces en0 and en1 progress. Before the ipconfig waitall command, they are there with no IPs. After the command, they still have no ips and they show up as 'inactive'. Over the next few seconds, the various IPs start to load up. But the two interfaces show up the whole time.
So the easy patch solution would be to just run ipconfig waitall followed by sleep 6 and call it a day. But I'd rather learn exactly what is causing the hangup so I can wait for that exact 'thing' to be ready, instead of leaving the firewall completely open for 6 seconds. It is a high traffic server and gets lots of hack/ddos attempts so every second may count.

You shouldn't have to create your own plist to enable the pf firewall on boot especially since you're using the default rule set.  You just need to enable it.  This will launch at the "correct time" when all of your interfaces are configured and up.
Step 1:  Edit the Apple supplied plist
The file you're looking for is  /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.pfctl.plist.
Change the Disabled key from "true" to "false".  Here's what it should look like:
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Disabled</key>
    <false/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.apple.pfctl</string>
    <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
    <string>/var/run</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/sbin/pfctl</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>pfctl</string>
        <string>-f</string>
        <string>/etc/pf.conf</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Step 2:  Load (or reload) the plist with launchctl
% sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.pfctl.plist

Step 3:  Firewall should be enabled upon boot.

My recommendation...
You should not expose the Mac (or any server) directly to the Internet but instead, it should be behind a firewall box/appliance!
Don't get me wrong - I am a huge fan of pf.  You should still enable the pf firewall on the Mac.   However, if what you're saying is correct that even for a couple seconds you get slammed with DDoS attacks, the (Mac) server shouldn't be dealing with them; your firewall should.  In fact, you should have a proper pfSense firewall in front of this server.  By having a separate firewall, the Mac will always be protected regardless of its status (i.e. an inadvertent rule change mistakenly opens it up).
You also gain the advantage of being able to run packages like pfBlocker-NG on the appliance (will drop connections from known bad actors based on black/white lists) giving you a higher level of protection.  Having it on the appliance frees up your Mac from having to handle those processes.


Copy and Cut sometimes don't work My system is kept fully up to date and I still see this problem intermittently, although not as often as I used to; I would say that this has not been fully fixed. If there are any workarounds other than rebooting, this would be a good place to collect them. This has previously been closed and re-opened due to demand.

Cutting and copying do not always seem to change the content of the clipboard, whether triggered from a keyboard shortcut, a menu option, or even drag and drop. At the least this results in sometimes praying the wrong information, at worst it results in cut randomly acting like a delete key. The behavior as I have observed started out as staying to randomly occur and then consistently happen until the system is rebooted, for all programs including finder and the terminal.now it seems to stay randomly and then intermittently but at a high frequency occur, again regardless of program.

Searching on google produces no useful results for this issue.

Copied from Drag & drop and cut & paste not working [closed] so that others may find this question in search

  Possible Duplicate:
  Can anyone explain this clipboard behaviour?

  This is weird. I'm on OSX Lion, and sometimes both drag & drop and cut
  & paste stop working, at the same time. They stop working in any
  program, not just the Finder. And it's not just the shortcut: if I try
  to right click and select "Copy" it doesn't work either.

  This has happened three times so far. A reboot fixes it, but it's
  annoying at best. Any solution?

Does anyone know of any way to fix this, or otherwise how to report this to Apple?

@bmike I have removed other questions, I had this issue on a series of Macs, both iMacs and unibody MBPs, under OSX 10.7 and 10.8. I no longer use OSX so can't really contribute any more to this question.

Based on this post, the following worked for me.

Check if the pboard daemon is running:

launchctl list | grep com.apple.pboard

If the pboard daemon is running, then stop and start it.  If it's not running, start it:

launchctl stop com.apple.pboard
launchctl start com.apple.pboard

Then, you may need to restart the application(s) where cut-and-paste is not working.

Sometimes you're not allowed to copy and paste from certain places (websites, Java, Flash content, etc.)
It is flashing because you're holding the Cmd+C down too long.  Press it once.

If this is still a problem, you should try a third party application for a clipboard utility from a site like MacUpdate.


Very slow Intel 660p 2 TB M.2 in Icybox enclosure So, i´ve installed an Intel 660p 2 TB M.2 drive into this enclosure.

The speed has been good for a while, but it seemed to slow down a lot when i had about 150 GB left on the drive. Speed is down to 40 MB/s! I used to have well over 500 MB/s, and maybe even more if i remember it correctly.

Now i tried to delete a lot of files (400 GB availible now) to check if that helped, but no, still very slow.. :/

Im using it with a macbook pro 2016 i7 thru usb c cable. Tried the repair function in diskmanager but that did not help.

How can I improve performance again?

SSDs use flash cells to store data. At first, only one bit could be stored in each flash cell. As technically got more advanced, more bits could be stored in each cell. This allows SSDs to become cheaper. There's a major disadvantage, though: writes are way slower. When your drive is new, it uses the QLC (4 bits per cell) as SLC (1 bit per cell), which is much faster. As you fill it up, it has to convert SLC cells into QLC cell, and soon you only have QLC cells. This is only made worse by the fact that you're not running TRIM commands. TRIM tells the drive which space is not in use anymore, which means whenever you write to an empty space, you don't have to erase the cell before you write to it. That's why you don't see any performance increases after deleting files, it still things the drive is full, and thus won't use the "SLC cache" feature.

Relevant video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OffzVc7ZB-o


Editing contacts creates a duplicate I have 5 different email accounts: iCloud, GMail, Hotmail and two others which my iPhone does not give the option to sync its contacts.

So, I have only synced my contacts with iCloud and since barely a month ago, when I edit a contact it appears immediately a copy of it and if I delete one, both of the are deleted.

Does anyone know what is going on?

Does the duplicate appear on your iPhone or within your iCloud account.

Try editing your iPhone contacts directly via this tool for example:

http://www.copytrans.net/iphone-contacts.php

Also, where do you edit the contact entries from which the duplicates result - on your iPhone or within the iCloud. I would assume that if you are editing them on the iPhone, a temporary local copy is created on your iPhone until it is synced back to the iCloud after which the duplicate copy (physically residing on your iPhone) will be gone.


Blue Box with White Question Mark On certain websites (minecraftforum.net) most images appear as a blue box with a white question mark in it on safari. On my school forums (private to the school only, so can't link) normal images work fine, but an animated GIF generates the same blue box. The images do not load in chrome or firefox. Anyone know why?

I have safari 6.1, I'm on a MacBook, and I'm running osx 10.7.5

When you access the school's forums, are you on a VPN? If so they may be filtering larger files, as suggested in a comment.

This animated .gif file works fine for me in Safari. Make sure its not working for you before we go looking for local causes to your problem, rather than forum or gateway problems you and others have alluded to.

Try resetting the cache on Safari (Safari > Reset Safari > Check the "Remove all website data" box) and try again. It's possible that Safari is not refreshing the cache, so try that.


How do I remove ALL PHOTOS from iPhone? I have 26K photos on a 64GB iPhone 7 and running iOS 12.4

How can I delete all photos en-masse?  That is, removing all photos from the iPhone's Camera Roll.

Your question doesn't full specify what you're wanting or what you've already tried, so I'm assuming you want to do this directly from your iPhone (as opposed to doing it while your iPhone is connected to a Mac/PC).

I'm also assuming you're just wanting to free up space and you've already backed up your photos. If so, you can follow these steps:

Open the Photos app on your iPhone
Tap on the Albums icon down the bottom
Tap on the Camera Roll album at top left
Tap on Select at top right (the word Select will change to Cancel)
Tap on the status bar at top of the screen (this will take you to the oldest photos in your Camera Roll
Now tap on the first photo (at top left) without taking your finger off the screen and while keeping your finger down gently swipe across the screen and then swipe down continuously - this will select all photos up to the point at which you take your finger off the screen
Tap on the Trash can icon at bottom right to delete all selected photos

NOTE: If you're doing this to free up space, then you will also need to remove your deleted photos from the Recently Deleted album (as photos are stored there for 30 days before actually being removed from your device). You can select the Recently Deleted album from the very bottom of the Albums screen in order to remove them from there and free up space.

Ich bin dummkopf!   “Settings->general->reset->erase contents and settings” did the trick.  I just realized that I did not phrase my question right. I wanted to erase everything on the iPhone.  Thank you very much for trying to help me. You are the best!


Application level volume control in OS X? I recently switched from PC to Mac and one thing I miss is Windows' application-level volume control (i.e. mute Firefox, turn up iTunes, turn down Skype etc). How can I achieve the same on a Mac? Or better yet, I want volume settings based on location (using HTTP location API or WiFi network name) and time of day or day of week etc.

A free and open-source solution is BackgroundMusic.
A nicer and paid solution is Rogue Amoeba's SoundSource

On mac, with i tunes the command is cmd and the UP arrow, this also works for divx, vlc ext, with the internet, just use the volume controls F11 / F12.

No need to spend monies on silly apps!


iOS 5 reminders for Mac I like iOS5 reminders app and use it on my iPod touch , however I am looking for an app for OSX lion which provide similar functionality for macOSX in an app which can sync with reminders app for iOS5.

The reminders on your iOS 5 device get synced automatically thorugh iCloud with the reminders in iCal.

I did a search in the Apple app store for "Reminders" and and app called "To-do Lists" came up. It looks like what you're looking for.


MacBook Pro 2018 - "You can't open the application "iTunes" because it is being update" I was installing the updates for iTunes because I wanted to connect my iPhone to my Mac. However, I closed my MacBook prematurely since I didn't realise that they were still updating and now iTunes can't open again. How can I check its current updating progress (if it is at all)?

Updates worked for me. I had Safari - can’t open the application Safari because it is being updated.

I went into App Store then updates and clicked update all. That seemed to clear the issue. Safari is back running
Thank you

Launch the Mac App Store app and click on the Updates tab. The progress of any currently running update as well as any newly available updates are shown here.

With the Updates tab open, click on the Update icon in the apps toolbar to refresh the check for update.


All my iMessages were deleted My iPod Touch ran out of battery and died for a short time. When I plugged it back in and it turned back on, all of my conversations on iMessage had been deleted. I still have the contacts but all of my texts and messages were gone. Why did this happen and is there any way to get my messages back?

Reboot your phone.
I discovered a solution for this one accidentally, after I encountered this bug a couple of days ago. I turned my phone off for a time, and then back on again - when it was turned back on, the list of messages was fully restored. I think that this might be because only the listing of messages was made inaccessible, and the messages themselves weren't deleted - I noticed that when I was texted by someone who I'd received messages from in the past, the message history was properly displayed once I opened the text conversation with them.
It's possible that the simplicity of fixing this issue is why Apple hasn't patched the bug in the 5+ years it's been known about.

There ( sorry ) Is no possible way to get your messages back. The reason is is probably because your iPod was corrupt or not up to date. Simply contact an apple store and turn your Pod in, and they should give u a replacement while they check for a virus. Other reason may be because someone sent u a corrupt picture, long text, or virus text while your phone was off. Update your iPhone ( Software update ) and it'll never happen again.


iPad app with variable speed video playback? I would like to watch recorded lectures at 1.7x of their original speed.

Which app will allow me to do that?

I built Swift Player for iPhone and iPad that will allow you to change (speed up) the playback speed of video and audio from the device or even directly from websites like YouTube, etc.

You can find out more information on the product's website.

Note: This is a product that I have developed.

As an author I could recommend a new Free iOS player with variable playback speed and many other adjustable playback options alphaSXplayer


Mac mini wont shutdown I can't shutdown my Late 2012 Mac mini, running El Capitan, in the normal way, by selecting the Shut Down... on the Apple menu. Every time I try, Finder vanishes and the shutdown progress freezes. I'm still able to work with the Dock, so I can shutdown using Terminal. In long term it's really annoying.

Hopefully someone has an idea whats wrong.

[EDIT] I just found out that im able to shut the system down by sign out and them use the displayed shutdown on the bottom.

Close all Mac OS X apps before shutting down
Try to determine if one particular app is causing the problem. Maybe one app always aborts the shutdown process. Try updating to the latest version.
Open Disk Utility. Choose the your main hard drive and click Repair Disk.
Usefully shutdown freezes are caused by incompatible or outdated drivers e.g printer, scanner software. Open OS X activity monitor. Do you see any high cpu processes or unresponsive applications that are marked red?

If you can acess terminal just do.

sudo reboot

or

sudo shutdown

that should reboot or shut down your system. when using sudo it will ask for a password this is the same as when you login to your profile.

Hope this helps


How can I wirelessly transfer photos from my iPhone to my computer without using Photostream? Sometimes I take a quick photo with my iPhone's camera and I need to get it onto my iMac.
I'd love to do this wirelessly (like syncing and everything else).

I'm aware that iCloud's Photostream should allow me to do this, but I don't have a new enough version of iPhoto to access it. I really never use iPhoto, so it's hard to justify an upgrade.

When I connect my phone to the computer with USB, there are a number of quick ways to get photos off of it. Image Capture, Preview, iPhoto, etc. But, none of those options are available via WiFi or Bluetooth.

Is there a way to transfer photos from my iPhone to my iMac wirelessly and without using Photostream?

Ideally, Image Capture and/or Preview would see the phone as a networked camera.

You could use an iPhone app like WiFi Photo Transfer (There are a few of those available in the app store), but I don't think this is going to be any more convenient than simply plugging your phone in.

Another way would be to take the photos with Dropbox. The Dropbox iPhone app let's you take phones, which would just appear in your Dropbox folder on your Mac.

On the Apps tab of the iTunes window - where you see all the apps on all the screens of your phone - way down the bottom, you'll find a list of apps that can transfer files to and from the computer. Even on wifi.

One of those apps is iPhoto. You do need iPhoto installed on the phone, and you need to save the images from your camera roll in iPhoto.

The process is a bit cumbersome - an applescript wizard could whip up something, though - but it gets the task done and sure saves looking for a cable.


Why I am unable to switch bash to the one installed by homebrew? I'm trying to update bash to version 4.x. I did brew upgrade, then brew update, then brew install bash. I ran sudo bash -c "echo /usr/local/bin/bash >> /etc/shells" and sudo bash -c "echo /usr/local/bin/bash >> /private/etc/shells". I've tried symlinking /usr/local/Cellar/bash/4.3.32/bin/bash to /usr/local/bin/bash. I've closed Terminal.app. I've even logged out of Mac completely. Nothing I do has updated $BASH_VERSION to the right thing. bash --version does say the right thing, but I think I read somewhere that that is less reliable then echo $BASH_VERSION (maybe). Here's a summary of what I'm seeing:

I just need to know . . . what version of bash am I actually on? And if it's not 4.x, how do I reliably, definitively make it that?

I am on Yosemite FWIW.

Edit:

$PATH was too long for a comment. Here it is:

/Users/AndrewNichols/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.1/bin:/Users/AndrewNichols/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.1@global/bin:/Users/AndrewNichols/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.1/bin:/usr/local/heroku/bin:/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:/usr/local/Cellar/grep/2.18/bin:/usr/local/opt/gnu-sed/libexec/gnubin:/usr/local/opt/gnu-tar/libexec/gnubin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/heroku/bin:/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:/usr/local/Cellar/grep/2.18/bin:/usr/local/opt/gnu-sed/libexec/gnubin:/usr/local/opt/gnu-tar/libexec/gnubin:~/activator:/Users/AndrewNichols/sonarqube-4.5/bin/macosx-universal-64:/Users/AndrewNichols/sonar-runner-2.4/bin:/Users/AndrewNichols/bin:~/activator:/Users/AndrewNichols/sonarqube-4.5/bin/macosx-universal-64:/Users/AndrewNichols/sonar-runner-2.4/bin:/Users/AndrewNichols/bin:/Users/AndrewNichols/.rvm/bin

Here's one split on colon, for readability:

'/Users/AndrewNichols/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.1/bin',
'/Users/AndrewNichols/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.1@global/bin',
'/Users/AndrewNichols/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.1/bin',
'/usr/local/heroku/bin',
'/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin',
'/usr/local/Cellar/grep/2.18/bin',
'/usr/local/opt/gnu-sed/libexec/gnubin',
'/usr/local/opt/gnu-tar/libexec/gnubin',
'/usr/local/bin',
'/usr/bin',
'/bin',
'/usr/sbin',
'/sbin',
'/opt/X11/bin',
'/usr/local/heroku/bin',
'/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin',
'/usr/local/Cellar/grep/2.18/bin',
'/usr/local/opt/gnu-sed/libexec/gnubin',
'/usr/local/opt/gnu-tar/libexec/gnubin',
'~/activator',
'/Users/AndrewNichols/sonarqube-4.5/bin/macosx-universal-64',
'/Users/AndrewNichols/sonar-runner-2.4/bin',
'/Users/AndrewNichols/bin',
'~/activator',
'/Users/AndrewNichols/sonarqube-4.5/bin/macosx-universal-64',
'/Users/AndrewNichols/sonar-runner-2.4/bin',
'/Users/AndrewNichols/bin',
'/Users/AndrewNichols/.rvm/bin'

Some of the duplication there is because I have terminal set to run tmux on startup, so .bashrc gets sourced twice.

Okay, so apparently this was happening because tmux was holding on to the original bash version (even though I had exited tmux and reloaded it's config). tmux kill-server followed by relaunching tmux fixed it for me.

This should fix your issue.

mv /bin/bash /bin/bash3

and then create a symlink to

ln -s /usr/local/bin/bash /bin/bash

That should fix your issue.


How to show iOS screen on a projector like Steve Jobs did on his keynotes? How to show iOS screen on projector like Jobs did? Too many people ask me how to do this... They also want iPhone frame image like exactly Jobs did. (the iPhone frame image is optional)

About the iPhone/iPad frame images - they are available when you're a registered iOS developer: http://developer.apple.com/appstore/resources/marketing/
They are a very high quality Photoshop files (for printing and for screen use).

Use http://www.airserver.com better than a wired solution based on video interfaces.
It is about 15$, but its worth.


Is there a good / acceptable blog-publishing application on Mac OS X? On Windows, there is the pretty good Windows Live Writer.
I have always been told that there is no equivalent on Mac.

What would be the best alternative?

Some details about pros/cons, missing features, cool tips would be appreciated.
I will make this question community wiki.

One of the best applications is MarsEdit (40$) by Red Sweater Software.
It supports many blog types (including Tumblr), and allows both HTML and Rich Text editing.
I think it also allows editing Wordpress pages and not only blog posts.
It handles image uploading, editing of posts and supports multiple blogs.

Some of the cons of MarsEdit are its HTML editing shortcuts and macros which are a little uncomfortable and a bit too little.

If you're comfortable with HTML, then the known TextMate text editor can also be used as an editor for blog posts and then you can either copy/paste from there or use a blogging bundle which will let you upload from there. TextMate can also show you live preview of your HTML in a separate window.

Of course, being a specialized application, MarsEdit is more feature rich in the blogging sense but TextMate has a better editor (obviously).

SmartXBlog is desktop blog editor for both Windows and Mac. It has WYSIWYG editor, image editor, online content search and RSS feed available from nearly 100 popular websites and you can even add your own RSS and drag and drop your result to editor. I think it is best available blogging desktop editor for Windows and Mac.


Finder folder permission asking some folders on my mac asks your my password to rename, add, delete files in a folder. I checked the folder privileges in Get Info to compare with normal folders, it was the same but the result is totally different. Can anyone tell me how to disable or fix permission issues for finder folders? Thanks!

Generally speaking repairing permissions is a quick and easy task. head on over to /Applications/Utilities and look for Disk Utility. Launch it, select your HD and then click on repair permissions and let it do it's thing. That could take a couple of minutes or 15-20 depending on how messed up things are.

When I do this I usually quit out of ALL other apps and let disk utility do it's thing in peace. Then I run it again, and again until I get no more errors.

All of that assumes that it is a simple permissions error. It could be you are trying to modify a folder in a location that Apple does not want you changing things, the /Applications and /Applications/Utilities folder spring to mind.

If, however, these issues are on your desktop or in the folders Apple sets aside for your files (documents, music, pictures, etc.) then yes there is a problem and it MIGHT be more than permissions. Could be actual disk errors.

In Disk Utility you can "Verify Disk" but you can't "Repair Disk." That requires booting from install media, the recovery partition or the disk repair utility of your choice (my choice is Diskwarrior, YMMV).

If repairing permissions doesn't fix the issue AND you are working with folders Apple deigns to allow you to work with, use Disk Utility (or 3rd party tools) to repair the disk/file structure.

I fixed it by copying the folder to external drives and copying back into the Pictures folder.


How to type backslash and pipe? (Czech layout, USB keyboard) I use an USB keyboard with my Macbook Pro - no choice here, some of the keys of internal keyboard are damaged. The Keyboard is from Genius, type LuxeMate i200. I use Czech QWERTY layout.

Everything pretty much works, although I can't seem to find a way how to type backslash \ and pipe | characters.

Above the right Enter, I have a mysterious key with following characters:

first row: | ) ;
second row: \ ň ¨ (and "circle in front of x" i can't even type)

I've tried the following:

key: ¨
left SHIFT + key: `
right SHIFT + key: `
left ALT + key: ¨
right ALT + key: ¨
left SHIFT + key: "
right SHIFT + key: "
FN + key: ¨

I would really like to avoid switching between keyboards OR copying the characters from Google, as I use them a lot. Can someone help me please?

EDIT: Here is a photo of the keyboard, if that helps.

EDIT 2: Thanks @krnk, the keyboard viewer helped with the backslash character! I still have a problem with the pipe character though.

What the viewer shows is not consistent with the keyboard (there is no key between left shift and Z key, for example, which would solve my problem with the pipe). Is that maybe another symptom of misconfiguration?

Is there anything else I could try besides "changing keyboard type" (which I already did)?

I just bought a Genius keyboard in the Czech Republic and have the same problem, however I've found the following works for me:

Right alt + \
Shift + Right alt + |

To get the backslash character (\) using the Czech keyboard layout press AltGr + Q.


El Capitan Finder shows 10 GB more disk space I'm running 10.11.2 on a MBP 15". Since a few weeks ago I am observing a strange phenomenon: all disks show roughly 10GB more free space than they really have.

E.g. I plug a USB drive in that has 32 GB. Finder shows me 42 GB.

Other example: Finder shows that I have 11GB free. I pull a 2 GB file to the Finder and get the message: not enough disk space.

What could be the reason?

I tried out the usual Apple voodoo things (PRAM reset etc), and one behaved strange: when I started the Macbook with pressed Shift-key (safe start), it took very, very long. Usually this takes like 5 minutes, this time it took more than 40 Minutes (huh!).

After that I just restarted again and everything was fine. So it looks like safe start fixed the problem

Probably a corruption in one of the system caches (that are emptied when starting in Safe Mode).


iTerm as a slide-out terminal from the top of the screen I have installed iTerm2 and was hoping I'd have something like guake (Yes I just switched from Ubuntu). I mapped the hotkey to a button of my choice and it works fine, but I miss the slide-down-from-top animation like I had in Ubuntu.

You can use iTerm2's system-wide hotkey with the Hotkey Window profile to do this.
In iTerm2 preferences, click on the "Keys" tab and choose "Hotkey". Click "Create a Dedicated Hotkey Window…" and assign the hotkey you'd like to use.
Check the "Hotkey toggles a dedicated window with profile:" option and choose "Hotkey Window" in the popup menu below (should be selected by default).
With default settings, the Hotkey Profile window will stretch across the top of the screen, and the hotkey will drop the window down from the top, complete with animation.

You can customize the settings for the "Hotkey Window" profile under the "Profiles" tab. To make it look like a Quake drop-down terminal, you can use similar "Window" preferences:

The best solution I have found has been dTerm.


Anyone know of a Finder replacement? I am starting to dislike the Finder. Does anybody know of a good Finder replacement, something Unixy or Nexty which will still work with all Mac OS X applications?

When it comes to alternatives of Finder, there are two major alternatives.

First, you have TotalFinder. It looks a lot like the normal Finder, but it can do so much more. You can copy/paste across windows, you can work with tabs or dual screen,... It's my personal favorite. I've been using it for many months now.

The second alternative is PathFinder. I don't have any personal experience with this software, but when I take a look at their website, it has some cool features too.

So, my advice is to check those two options and I can suggest you TotalFinder!

That the question! We use the Finder to organize and retrieve our files. What means "Finder replacement", something like TotalFinder, PathFinder, …, or a really new way to manage our files? I mean, a new concept able to replace the Finder main function : managing our information.

If that is the question, if you AskDifferent, the following may interest you. I must be honest, I am also the developer of this new concept. But if you know any app that looks like mine, let me know.

The Finder use the Space to organize our files. The Space is divided into subspaces, or folders. As an alternative, or in addition to the Space organization, this new concept use the Time to organize our information, as we do with our brains. All day I record with my 5 senses lots of information. Will I have archive them in folders? No, I simply move the TimeCursor of may consciousness to remember. Like us, this new concept uses a temporal navigation rather than the spatial navigation (like the Finder) to retrieve information.

Here is a presentation of the new concept.


Adding the Print Document Option To The Right-Click Contextual Menu? In Windows it is possible to print a document on the desktop by right-clicking on it and choosing Print Document in the contextual menu that appears. By default this option is  unfortunately not given in OS X.

Is it therefore possible to create this option and therefore aid the printing of documents on a Mac ?

As suggested on this blog, you can use the following applescript :

tell application "Your Printer Name Here"
   activate
   print theFile without print dialog
   quit
end tell

To add it to the contextual menu, do as usual : Create a new automator service with this script.

Don't forget to select Service receives selected file and folders in the app you want (At least Finder but it can be from any app).

If you're wondering how to create a new automator service check out http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/customize-mac-right-click-menu/


How to remove chrome app icons from launchpad? I uninstalled Google chrome by deleting it from the Applications folder and I also deleted the associated profile data from ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome

But I have failed to remove all the chrome apps icons from launchpad.

I would greatly appreciate it if you can point to the location where google is keeping those app launchers. I have looked for them in the hidden folders as well as Google folders in ~/Library but I have had no luck.

Thanks in advance.

Open Finder, select Go/Go to Folder... (⇧⌘G), paste in:

~/Applications/Chrome Apps.localized

Delete the apps from there.

(Note that ~ means your user folder, not the regular Applications folder which is at /Applications without ~.)

Finally, empty the trash to remove from launchpad.

If you use Chrome Canary: it will have its own additional folder in ~/Applications.

Go to finder, click on the applications folder and drag google chrome into the trash. Once this is done, just empty the trash :)


Why won't iBooks wirelessly sync epubs or PDFs to my iPad? I'm aware of this question but it is now quite old. If I create a collection in iBooks on OSX (Yosemite, 10.10.3) and add a book (epub - not puchased via iBooks), it does not sync to my iPad (3rd gen, iOS 8.2) over wifi. The name of the collection itself is synced to the iPad but it is empty. Both devices are on the same wireless LAN and connected to the internet.

I believe syncing used to be via iTunes and this was the only way I could get books to sync to my iPad previously but this should now work using only iBooks. I have already performed the 'Move books from iTunes' operation from the iBooks menu on OSX.

'Sync Collections' is switched on in the iPad iBooks settings. I'm looking for a wireless solution, not USB sync.

I don't know if you still need this issued solved, but I struggled a lot to sync my ePubs (not bought through Apple) between my Apple Devices.

Here is the solution I've come up with (This can be done on both OSX or iOS):

Save your ePub/PDF file on iCloud Drive (inside a folder, just for organizational purposes);
Then open that file from the iCloud Drive folder into iBooks.

This way, the instance  of your ePub/PDF will be the same running on both your iDevice iBooks and your Mac iBooks.

All changes that you make (add bookmarks, highlights and current page) will also sync.

Regarding your collections, they will behave as they should syncing normally between devices.

Try this:

Update to OS X El Capitan 10.11.4, it adds the ability to store PDFs in the iCloud  for iBooks (Official Changelog)
Sync iBooks via iCloud

If that doesn't work:

Update iOS on your iPad and try again.


node wants to use the "Local Items" keychain Every so often when I open my computer, that message appears. Can anyone tell me what node is?

I got this too, and I ran "ps aux | grep node" from the terminal. I've seen a couple of different programs show up. One was Videostream. Another was actually Adobe Creative Cloud:

kenlu              693   0.0  0.2  5996836  27612   ??  S    11Dec18  23:09.26 /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Creative Cloud Experience/CCXProcess/CCXProcess.app/Contents/MacOS/../libs/node /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Creative Cloud Experience/CCXProcess/CCXProcess.app/Contents/MacOS/../js/main.js

So it looks like this is just part of Adobe Creative Cloud, which is probably fine.

Most probably it caused by Adobe Creative Cloud, and make sure it this option,
1- check in system preferences>security and privacy>in the privacy tap make sure iCloud check marked.
2-system preferences >security and privacy >in general tap click open anyway the adobe creative cloud if showing here.
3-open finder> then click on "Go" type this command ~/library then press go>find keychain folder open it and delete all files, empty trash and restart your Mac
4-remove adobe creative cloud from start up, open system preferences>user and groups>clicl on login tap> select adobe if showing then remove it by clicking - button.


Windows 7 computer not showing up on Apple TV Both iTunes on Windows 7 and the Apple TV 3 are updated to the latest versions.  My PC is connected to the router via Cat 5 and the Apple TV is connected on wireless.  I can AirPlay with my iPad or iPhone. I've had this work just fine before with other computers. Home sharing is enabled on both devices and connected to the same account with the correct password. I can't figure out what's going on.

The problem could be with your firewall. You should check the firewall software you use and open relevant ports. Some firewalls actually have predefined rules for the services, but for most you'll have to define them manually.

Most commonly the services used are named mDNS or Bonjour sharing. If these aren't found, you can find a list of relevant ports here and add them manually.

In Apple TV, Go To Settings > General and hit restart - beyond that I think Apple Support would be a good way to go


How to explicitly password-lock an iPhone regardless of timeout setting? Can I explicitly lock the iPhone, so that it needs a passphrase to unlock?

I want to instantly lock the iPhone and not be waiting until "Require Passcode" (currently at 1 hour) kicks in.

Basically I want the iPhone to automatically lock after an hour, but if I want to lock right now, to do that easily.

There are 2 types of locking mechanism (certainly in iOS 5 and iOS 4.2.1).

Firstly, in Settings > General there is Auto-Lock, with settings of 1-5 minutes, or Never.

Secondly, same place, there is Passcode Lock, which if set has options of Immediately, after 1, 5, 15 minutes, or 1, 4 hours.

The first of these locks your screen after a period of inactivity (for the purposes of saving battery hence the max of 5 minutes), but the second refers to the amount of time that must pass after the screen it locked before the passcode is required to unlock (for the purpose of security).

A common mistake it to confuse the two, and the wonder why it does (or doesn't) ask for your passcode each time.  You might have the auto-lock set to 5 minutes, thinking it is the correct setting, leaving the passcode lock to immediate which is the default.  This is why you might need to re-enter your pin even if you try it only seconds after locking when you think it's set to 5 minutes.

To go back to the original question, without your passcode lock being set to immediate, there is no way to immediately lock your phone without waiting for whatever setting you have got instead.  It would be nice if something like a double tap on the power button when locking did it, or if holding it down to get the slide to power off screen also had a slide to lock now section, and I may well head over to Apple feedback now to suggest same, but to answer the OP question directly and finally, the answer is no.

if you mean lock so that it requires the screen to enter the 4-digit passcode,
you just tap the power button (the button on top edge) quickly once.
Then, it locks


iPhone's power button doesn't lock, shows Swipe to Power Off instead My iPhone SE, running iOS 12.4 reached its lower battery limits and went dead. I, foolishly pressed power button and then it stayed in an Apple Logo screen → power off → Apple Logo, loop for a while till I could get hold of the charger. After plugging in and letting it get some power, I observed the following:

It vibrated 3-4 times as if I removed and plugged in the power again which I didn't.
Pressing the power button once shows the Swipe To Power Off screen after a second or so. Doing it twice gives the same result.
To be able to lock it, I use the assistive touch method but that works only when I tap the Lock Screen  icon twice.

How can I get my power button to start locking the screen again ?

Is there anything else I can do except connecting the charger, if it goes dead again, to power it up ?

I bought it 2.5 years ago, and don't have AppleCare. Its battery capacity is 94%.

The button seems to have fixed itself. I used assistive touch to lock it

Locking an iPhone if button is broken?

and kept checking if power button is working or not. Often it shows the swipe to power off screen, but that's okay. Somehow battery capacity became 84%.

If your settings are set so that your phone automatically locks after no time at all, tapping the power button will lock the screen. But holding the power button will not lock it, just turn it off.

And for the charger issue, sometimes chargers are not securly plugged in and bounce between plugged in and not plugged in.


How can I delay audio in an mp4 file? How can I delay the audio (relative to the video stream) in an MP4 movie file and save the result?

You may use the free app QTSync which supports this feature.

VLC supports audio delay and re-encoding.


How can I create an Apple ID for China if I live in the U.S.A I don't have a credit card I'm completely broke and I'm not jail token I'm just trying to get a free Chinese app from America ( Plants Vs. Zombies 2 Chinese Version).

You have to make another apple account, there are tons if tutorials for that. When you get to verify or review or something on your iPhone you need to choose the country. You may not find "China" but at the end of the list is China written in Chinese (translate China via google and it works).

When you get to the address you must write like I did:

I figured it out.

When you go to change your country and it asks for a credit card, just click bank card instead and it lets you continue with no card numbers.