How can I manually delete old backups to free space for Time Machine? I use a Time Capsule for backup and now I want the drive to back up data from an extra Mac. But the drive is filled up with old backups from Mac 1. There simply is not enough space available for the backup for Mac 2.

I get this error message when running Time Machine backup:

  Time Machine could not complete the backup.
  This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires
  28.68 GB but only 626.2 MB are available.

  Time Machine needs work space on the backup disk, in addition to the
  space required to store backups. Open Time Machine preferences to
  select a larger backup disk or make the backup smaller by excluding
  files.

I know Time Machine itself is able to remove old backups when it needs more space. But in this case it does not remove any Mac 1 backups to make space for Mac 2.

Question is, how do I do it manually?

Be careful with sudo and making sure you pick the correct Mac's files since there is no undo or confirmation of the following command:

sudo tmutil delete /Volumes/drive_name/Backups.backupdb/old_mac_name

The sudo command needs your password (and it won't echo to the screen, so just type it and pause to be sure you're dating the correct files before pressing enter). If you want to be safer, you can pick one snapshot to delete first to be sure the command works as intended. This is nice since it could take hours to clean up some larger backup sets and you want to leave the Mac confident it's deleting the correct information store.

You can use the tmutil tool to delete backups one by one.

sudo tmutil delete /Volumes/drive_name/Backups.backupdb/mac_name/YYYY-MM-DD-hhmmss

Since tmutil was introduced with Lion, this will not work on earlier OS versions.

If you want to get the current directory of backups (there can be multiple destinations defined and only one will be "current")

sudo tmutil machinedirectory

Here is step-by-step what I did to delete my old backup

Open Time Machine Disk
Locate and open the folder Backups.backupdb
Go to view by date and choose oldest on top
Select the backup you want to delete
Open Teminal and type sudo rm -rvf
Drag and drop the old folders you want to delete in the Terminal Window
Enter you user password at the prompt

Go take a coffee or watch a movie, when the process is done you may have to repeat it again for some folders that don't want to delete.

When all your old folders are gone, Time Machine needs to update its database. Here is a way to force Time Machine to update.

Enter Time Machine and go to the oldest Backup which is still listed
Select it and click on the little gear and then choose Delete Backup
Enter your password and wait a few minutes
Quit Time Machine interface and come back again. Now you should have your Time Machine listing the correct backup.


F20-F24 keys do not respond, but are mapped OS X Yosemite, 10.10.3, MacBook Pro mid-2012.

I am building a keyboard, and have mapped onto it all F1-F24 keys using tmk's firmware. F1-F19 all respond (I'm using Karabiner's EventViewer utility to detect keypresses), but F20-F24 do not. I know the keys work physically, but OS X doesn't recognize them.

Is it even possible to use F20-F24 on OS X, or are there other keys unused by OS X that will work (I want to use them as macro keys)?

Here is the guessing answer, but makes sense, so probably possibly true.
What's peculiar about F21-F24 keys on MacOS?


Logical Volume Group 17gb "Available Space" Can anyone help explain why there is 17 GB worth of free space on my LVG I can't seem to do anything with this space. Is there anyway to fix this? I have already reformatted the disk then cloned the contents back with CCC. I also have FileVault enabled.

Whenever I see this on others setups it is usually a few KB not 17 GB

I don't know what happened with your drives while installing OS X Yosemite, but I have the same Fusion drive as you but ostensibly without "glitches".

First let's compare your and my Fusion drive, though mine is not filevaulted, but that shouldn't make a big difference.

Your SSD:

Apollo:~ arronvoce$ sudo gpt -r show /dev/diskO
     start          size  index  contents
         0             1         PMBR
         1             1         Pri GPT header
         2            32         Pri GPT table
        34             6
        48        409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    489648     236306352      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
 236715992        262144      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
 236978136             7
 236978143            32         Sec GPT table
 236978175             1         Sec GPT header

My SSD:

machine:~ user$ sudo gpt -r show  /dev/disk0
      start         size  index  contents
          0            1         PMBR
          1            1         Pri GPT header
          2           32         Pri GPT table
         34            6
         40       409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640    236306352      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  236715992       262144      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  236978136            7
  236978143           32         Sec GPT table
  236978175            1         Sec GPT header

They have the same size and are formatted the same way.

Your HDD:

Apollo:~ arronvoce$ sudo  gpt -r show /dev/disk1
     start          size  index  contents
         0             1         PMBR
         1             1         Pri GPT header
         2            32         Pri GPT table
        34             6
        48        409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    409648    5857846336      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
5858255976       1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
5859525512       1007623
5860533135            32         Sec GPT table
5860533167             1         Sec GPT header

My HDD:

machine:~ user sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk1
       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640  5858853952      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  5859263592     1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  5860533128           7
  5860533135          32         Sec GPT table
  5860533167           1         Sec GPT header

They have the same physical size but are formatted slightly different: after your Recovery HD (the third partition) you have some non-formatted blocks with a total size of ~516 MB (1007623 blocks)

Your Physical Volume on the SSD:

    +-< Physical Volume 1212D66A-ADCC-49C2-B2BD-43180F3D1B6F
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     120988852224 B (121.0 GB)

My Physical Volume on the SSD:

    +-< Physical Volume 1212D66A-ADCC-49C2-B2BD-43180F3D1B6F
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     120988852224 B (121.0 GB)

They have the same size.

Your Physical Volume on the HDD:

    +-< Physical Volume 39D4DCA9-7F2E-40FA-B457-CCDD4370FF2F
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     2999217324032 B (3.0 TB)

My Physical Volume on the HDD:

    +-< Physical Volume 39D4DCA9-7F2E-40FA-B457-CCDD4370FF2F
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     2999733223424 B (3.0 TB)

Your Physical Volume is ~516 MB (515899392 B) smaller than mine which roughly matches with your non-formatted blocks on disk1, which are "missing" now.

Your Logical Volume Group:

+-- Logical Volume Group 91F22B32-DD9C-442B-95F0-ED3DB69AC4FB
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         3120206176256   B (3.1 TB)
    Free Space:   17091772416 B   (17.1 GB)

My Logical Volume Group:

+-- Logical Volume Group 91F22B32-DD9C-442B-95F0-ED3DB69AC4FB
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         3120722075648 B (3.1 TB)
    Free Space:   114688 B (114.7 KB)

Your LVG is ~516 MB (515899392 B) smaller than mine, which matches with the findings above.

Your Logical Volume:

         +-> Logical Volume 2E2D175C-1397-474D-900F-A9DA7B9D65D6
             ---------------------------------------------------
             Disk:                 disk2
             Status:               Online
             Size (Total):         3097259147264 B (3.1 TB)

My Logical Volume:

        +-> Logical Volume 2E2D175C-1397-474D-900F-A9DA7B9D65D6
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk2
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          3106191572992 B (3.1 TB)

Your LV is ~ 22.9 GB smaller than your LVG (while 17.1 GB are indicated).
My LV is ~ 14.5 GB smaller than my LVG (while only 115 KB are indicated!).

Your LV is ~ 8.9 GB smaller than mine, which matches again, because 22.9 - 14.5 + 0.5 (the unformatted blocks on the HDD) = 8.9 GB

Compare this with a filevaulted OS X Yosemite VM where the LVG (67.86 GB) is 365 MB bigger than the LV (67.49 GB) and the indicated free space is 12.7 MB.

Finally we have to note:

the arithmetic of diskutil is in great need of improvement
apparently some valuable hard disk space is needed/lost dealing with LVM (CoreStorage). I haven't been able to find any sources explaining this though.
You lost only 8.9 GB (which are only 2.9 ‰ of the total disk space) instead of 17.1 GB compared to my Fusion Drive.

After backing up your Mac, booting to Internet Recovery Mode or Recovery Mode and starting Terminal.app you may try to increase (or decrease) your Logical Volume with the following undocumented command after unlocking the volume with diskutil cs unlockVolume LVUUID -stdinpassphrase:

diskutil cs resizeVolume LVUUID size

Example:

diskutil cs resizeVolume 2E2D175C-1397-474D-900F-A9DA7B9D65D6 (3106191572992+x*4096)b

with x = integer and 4096=8x512 (aligned blocks).

Usually you can't expand the CoreStorage Logical Volume beyond LVG_size - ~300 MB (tested with a 64 GiB disk, I don't know how this works for bigger disks). So you may start with 3119900m. If you get a message saying "Error -69720 There is not enough free space in the Core Storage Logical Volume Group for this operation" decrease the size in 100m or 500m steps until it works. If you enter g (=Giga), m (=Mega) or k (=kilo) instead of b (=byte) diskutil will do the math and choose a proper aligned (=multiple of 4096b) value.

I have tested those steps in my aforementioned 10.10.4 VM with FileVault enabled and managed to increase the size of the volume by 6 MB to 67.5 GB. Your mileage may vary.

This situation has been a common experience for those who first installed Yosemite on a secondary volume to try it out before committing to using it full time. It has also been noted by those who consolidated former Boot Camp volumes (via repartitioning) into free space on the startup volume.

I assure you the solution is simple and non-destructive, with this qualification: If I were you, I wouldn't rely on the second half of that statement even if it came to me printed on Apple letterhead, much less from a stranger's post at a help forum.

I see you made a whole disk backup with CCC, thereby demonstrating probity, perspicacity and economy. Now demonstrate paranoid cowardice and use Disk Utility to run "Verify Disk" on both the backup drive and the main drive before getting into the task at hand.

Quit Disk Utility. Issue the command diskutil cs list from the Terminal. You should see something like this:

You are looking for the two pieces of information highlighted above in red: The UUID of the logical volume to be restored to plain old HFS storage, plus confirmation that FileVault is unlocked. (If it is locked, adding the argument:

-stdinpassphrase

at the tail end of the revert command given below will ask for your FV password and unlock it before proceeding.)

The command to reverts the storage is
diskutil corestorage revert *insert_your_UUID_here*

After you quit Terminal to release its 'busy-in use' lock on the volume, launch Disk Utility. It will now be able to function as it should, and you can proceed as you would have before all of this got in your way.


Is there a way to assign global hot keys to go to the next/previous album in iTunes? What is the easiest way to add ability to go to next and previous album (not track) using media keys with modifier key (like ⌥+F7/F8 or any of ⇧, ctrl, ⌥, ⌘ or fn)?

Is it possible without using additional applications?

From http://www.usingmac.com/2007/11/21/mac-os-x-leopard-200-productivity-booster-hotkeys

153 Option-Right Arrow  Select next album
154 Option-Left Arrow   Select previous album

Version 0.86 of ByteController can move to the next or previous song globally. http://awil.no/bytecontroller


Removing the sim lock *with* the code I have iPhone 4 which currently has SIM lock. However, a law passed in my country requires my service provider to disable the lock free of charge. However, I have no idea how this is done in practice - Google only gives me guides to remove the SIM lock after jailbreaking and such.

Of course, I can simply ask my service provider what to do, but they are professionals when it comes to being unhelpful and misleading when it is in their best interest, so I'm trying to ask here first.

Other phone users (not iPhone) I asked said they only had to insert a code given from their service provider. I see no place in the iPhone where such a code can be entered. So, if there is such a place - where is it? If not - how can I remove the SIM lock with most ease?

Without going into the technical details, iOS ships in a deactivated state and needs to contact an activation server to determine the carrier and locking status each time the device is restored.

iTunes performs the unlocking of all phones less than iOS 5. With iOS5, the device can self activate or activate through iTunes.

When a device is sold, it enters the database as an unlocked device or a locked device. You need the entity that has a lock on your device to update this database. It doesn't really matter if they type it into their system or pass a message to Apple that the device should now be unlocked, but iOS doesn't seem to have a place to enter a unlock code for DIY unlocking and instead depends on the activation process to determine GSM lock status.

I haven't seen it documented anywhere, but my presumption is that Apple operates the service that determines which phone on a serial number / IMEI basis should be locked or unlocked. Given the millions of devices this system is surely automated and authority to make changes to the database is delegated through to the carriers to handle their own unlock requests.

Even here in the US where our Library of Congress has stated for the record that consumers are allowed by law to unlock their devices in certain circumstances, I have yet to see a documented case where someone actually got AT&T to perform a true unlock as described above.

This poped up on my iPhone last year. We called apple and they gave me a code the first time then when it happened again they told me to set a code mines 0000 try it or call to see if there's any other way.


I forgot my Encrypt Local Backup password. How can I start over? In iTunes (Windows 7) Encrypt local backup is checked, and I can't remember the password. I don't need to restore my iPad; I just want to be able to back it up. If I attempt to uncheck this, iTunes prompts for my password. How can I start clean (without losing any data from my iPad, which has not been upgraded to iOS 6)?

From Apple Support:

Warning: If you encrypt an iPhone backup in iTunes and then forget your password, you will not be able to restore from backup and your data will be unrecoverable. If you forget the password, you can continue to back up and use the device, however you will not be able to restore the encrypted backup to any device without the password. You do not need to enter the password for your backup each time you back up or sync.

If you cannot remember the password and want to start again, you must perform a full software restore and when iTunes prompts you to select the backup from which to restore, choose set up as a new device.

I assume it applies also to iPad, and yeah that's a terrible inconvenience for you, but at least it's a definitive answer from the source.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Open iTunes preferences from the Edit Menu.
Click the Devices tab. Here you will find the backup for your iPad.
Delete it by clicking the Delete Backup button below the pane.
Now you can start over.


Connecting multiple screens to the 2016 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar I'm thinking about buying the new MacBook Pro with 4 USB-C ports.

I want to attach two screens, mouse and keyboard and ethernet to the MacBook Pro while using the fewest number of USB-C ports possible.

So what I need is an adaptor with:

two DP or HDMI ports (or one DP port with daisy chaining support)
two or more USB ports
an ethernet port

Best case would be a hub to which all devices are connected with a single connection to the MacBook Pro, including power supply. Worst case if attaching the MacBook Pro to the devices would require me to use all four of USB-C ports.

Given the answers up to far, I can tell that:

Daisy chaining might or might not work with the MacBook Pro (since it requires DP1.2 which is supported by the graphics chipset, but it's uncertain if it's supported by the MacBook Pro itself)
I can attach the monitors with two cables as a last resort, leaving me with two ports for the remaining peripherals.

What I still don't know:

Would daisy chaining work with a hub or does it require the first monitor to be directly attached to the MacBook Pro?
Does some kind of hub exist supporting attachment of all listed devices with a single upstream connection to the MacBook Pro?

We have a brand new Late 2016 Macbook Pro and 2 Apple/LG 21.5 USB-C 4K monitors. Daisy-chaining/MST does not work. We are using the monitors and nothing else with the original cables.
Only way to get it to work is to connect each to individual USB-C ports on the MBP.
Sad but true.

the new Apple macbook with USB C ports will connect ONLY to thunderbolt equipped screens. It will NOT work with mini-display equipped screen. I learned it the hard way. For me it works only with an Apple thunderbolt screen (apple display), but not to an old iMac 27 (has mini-display, same plug but not a thunderbolt) or any of my Dells including a 4k... Daisy chaining will not work either as the first screen will not work.... The common mistake is to confound a mini display with a thunderbolt.... The type of screen which you can hook are very limited (the new LG sold by apple for example, or the old apple display, which is not a 4k or 5k. Beware beware....


Early 2013 Macbook Pro with 4K From what I'm reading online it sounds like 4K displays like Seiki displays will work correctly with a late 2013 MBP or later. I have an early 2013 MBP and am not finding much of any evidence that a 4K display will work with this model. Will a 4K display work at 3840x2160 with at least 30 Hz on a early 2013 MBP? Does anyone have this or a similar setup that could provide feedback or any issues that have? I'm interested in an external display with a high resolution and 4K seems like the best option.

Yes, it is possible to drive a 4k Display with an early 2013 and even 2012 Retina Macbook.
1. Download SwitchResX
here
2. Create a new custom profile for your monitor
Simplified Settings: CVT-RB
Active: 3840x2160
Scan Rate vertical: 30

Hit ok and press cmd-S to save.
3. Reboot and select custom profile

Based on this thread

No. According to this Apple Support article, 4K Display is not supported. The highest resolution your machine can support on an external monitor is 2560x1600.


Problems with duplicate photos on Photos app I've been trying to shrink my Photos Library with no luck. I have some duplicate photos, inherited from the iPhoto days, as the result of syncing my iPhone photos via iCloud and making a local copy of those same photos "just in case" on an iPhoto album. Now, I'm facing the task of deleting one of those duplicates using PhotoSweeper X, which is pretty handy, but I can't see where those duplicates come from. For instance:

One of those photos is actually on an album called "iPhone security copy", but I can't see the real path on the app. Is there any app that can detect duplicates, and also show the real album for those photos?

Thanks in advance.

By default PhotoSweeper shows library-based paths in the path control. You need to change Preferences to show file-based paths (the menu PhotoSweeper > Preferences; the General page, Path Bar: Show file path).

Default Image Capture app is very simple and predictable. You can import and duplicate photos with it without any side effects.


Where are digital touch messages kept? I have recently upgraded to iOS 10 and notice the new digital touch feature in Messages offers a "keep" button. Where are they kept? Can I see them in any other app, or do anything with them outside Messages? Can I export them? In what file format?

The keep option simply means they are not removed from the conversation - just as with audio messages, it's a space-saving measure.

You can long-press on a digital touch item to get a Copy option. From there you can paste it anywhere that accepts photos as paste data (such as the input field in WhatsApp or Messenger, or an image editing app that supports it). Note this will copy it as an image, and not as a GIF/video that contains the motion present in the original.

I've wondered this as well... I think they're kept in-line, meaning they stay in the iMessage thread rather than disappearing after the time expires.


What's the normal operating temperature for a unibody plastic Macbook? My Macbook seems to be running pretty hot lately.  iStat Pro is stating that my CPU temp is nearing 180 degrees F, and that the heatsink is approaching 150.  The laptop is noticeably warmer than normal on my lap even as I type this.

The usage patterns for the laptop really haven't changed all that much, except that my wife takes it to work with her now that she's started her new job as a realtor.

Thanks for any advice.

It's the fans. They are clogged with dust and other debris from the years of use. Notebooks are not air-tight and intake quite a bit of air over their lifetime (they need to push the air to the central components like the CPU/GPU to cool them). The units must be opened and cleaned periodically (depending on environment) to maintain peak operating performance. High fan speeds and poor thermal dissipation are signs that the fans aren't doing their job (they are likely clogged with dust and the exhaust is also likely blocked, preventing the output of the hot air blown off from the processing units). Computer fans work by pushing air taking from the environment onto the CPU/GPU. The hot air blown off the chips move through air vents in the back of the unit. Over time, dust settles on the fans, dropping their efficacy, and the vents, preventing the hot air from escaping. This bakes the components and results in the spike in over temperature.

Visit www.ifixit.com and pull up a guide on how to partially dismantle your notebook. If you are not technically proficient, bring it to a credible repair shop.

There are no "normal" operating temperatures for Apple notebooks, but there is an acceptable gradient. 82 degree Celsius is pushing the limits. The CPU's thermal threshold is 105 degrees Celsius (when that temperature is reached, the system will shutdown to prevent thermal damage).

And just an aside, regardless of locale, all temperatures should be reported as Celsius, never Fahrenheit when dealing with computer components. Official documentation always refers to Celsius.

I've got a late-2007 white Macbook and 180/150 isn't unusual.


iPad air - text messages won't send I have a new iPad air wifi no cellular and set up iMessage but I cannot send messages to non iPad or iPhone users from Messages. It always tries to send  the message but every time, it just stops and outputs that it has not been delivered. When  I turn iMessage off every time I want to send a text message it asks to login.  I can send messages on my iPhone to the same people that I want to message to using my iPad, with no problem.

iMessage is actually an instant messaging service, like Google Talk or AOL Instant Messenger, except iMessage is made by Apple and is only for Apple products. Only an iPhone with cellular can send SMS messages as well, and can automatically associate phone numbers of registered iMessage users with iMessage accounts, so if you try to use the app to send a text to a phone number registered to an iPhone, it will send an iMessage instead. iPads cannot send SMS messages to non-Apple devices nor an iMessage to a phone number not registered with iMessage from a Wi-Fi-only device.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3529

After 3 visits to an Apple store Genius Bar, I was finally informed that Ipad Air messaging only works when sending or receiving text messages with other apple products. This, in my opinion, makes it essentially useless. Since most of my messaging contacts do not have apple products, I turned off my iPad Air messaging and simply use my iPhone for all of my text messaging. I consider this to be a design flaw in iPad Air which will hopefully be recognized and corrected sometime in the near future.


Can't get past the login screen even with a correct password I recently upgraded a 2010 MacBook Pro to Mountain Lion, and it's worked fine for the most part. Today, however, upon waking up from sleep, the laptop won't go past the login screen. I enter the correct password, hit Enter... and the focus on the password box goes away, and nothing happens.

Note that the password box doesn't shake, as it does when the password is incorrect. I'm entering the right password, it just won't dismiss the login screen.

Anyone else have this problem, and find a solution other than a hard reset?

(Unlike this question, three-finger swiping accomplishes nothing.)

It looks like that User's folder got corrupted somehow, and the System doesn't know what to show and load, as It wasn't there.

Try logging with other user or a Disk Repair / Repair Permissions, through the Recovery Partition.

To prevent all of this, I recommend to create two admin accounts on your Mac. So if this problem comes, you can delete the damaged account and still log into your Mac


Cloudd quit unexpectedly Ever since I upgraded to Yosemite, I have been experiencing cloudd quit unexpectedly bug reports popping up at front very very often.

The issue is :

Crashed Thread:        0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:        EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSGenericException', reason: 'Error opening db at /Users/peter/Library/Caches/CloudKit/CloudKitMetadata: <CKError 0x7f8bc1419590: "Internal Error" (1)> (14/0x000e/unable to open database file)'
terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException
abort() called

Application Specific Backtrace 1:
0   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff88a6464c __exceptionPreprocess + 172
1   libobjc.A.dylib                     0x00007fff89b036de objc_exception_throw + 43
2   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff88a644fd +[NSException raise:format:] + 205
3   CloudKit                            0x00007fff83448a47 -[CKSQLite raise:] + 516
4   CloudKit                            0x00007fff834483b6 -[CKSQLite open] + 122
5   CloudKitDaemon                      0x000000010b523481 -[CKDMetadataCache init] + 199
6   CloudKitDaemon                      0x000000010b5233a0 __31+[CKDMetadataCache sharedCache]_block_invoke + 41
7   libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff88e1fc13 _dispatch_client_callout + 8
8   libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff88e1fb26 dispatch_once_f + 117
9   CloudKitDaemon                      0x000000010b523375 +[CKDMetadataCache sharedCache] + 46
10  cloudd                              0x000000010b37e541 cloudd + 5441
11  cloudd                              0x000000010b37e0e0 cloudd + 4320
12  cloudd                              0x000000010b37eace cloudd + 6862
13  libdyld.dylib                       0x00007fff85ebf5c9 start + 1

I do not know if this is relevant, but during 10.9 to 10.10 (yosemite) upgrade, I was asked to log in with my apple ID. I was connected to a WIFI provider (but not logged in) so I wasn't able to log in. The update did continue. On the first session I opened, iCloud kept crashing. I had a really hard time disabling iCloud drive.

The exception message says:

Error opening db at /Users/peter/Library/Caches/CloudKit/CloudKitMetadata

Make sure that cloudd has permissions to write in that directory.
If the directories permissions are fine, maybe the db was corrupted during the update. Try to move the file somewhere else, it's possible cloudd will recreate it if it doesn't see it.

Had the same issue with Yosemite. iMac14,2 / 3.5GHz Intel Quad Core i7/ 8G RAM / OSX10.10 / 3TB Fusion HD

cloudd.app continued to quit and I would get notifications of its quit.

Boot into SafeMode.
Rebooted back into my adm. account.
I get no more cloudd.app quits.


Problems Accessing (Synology) NAS over AFP directly over the finder and time machine with Mavericks MBPr we have two Macs, an older iMac and a MBPr both with Mavericks (10.9.3). Only one of them has a very annoying problem with our new synology ds214+.

With the iMac I can access the NAS over the the finder symbol (both AFP and SMB). Also time machine finds the time machine folder on the NAS which was configured over the synology dsm software.

The MBPr on the other hand can access the NAS over different ways: AFP from the browser "afp://ip.adress", smb over the finder symbol.
But there is no way I can get it to work with time machine or AFP over the finder symbol. I just get a message saying something like "While connecting to 'DiskStation' an error occured. Maybe the server is not available anymore".

I have a hands off! firewall installed, but it doesn't matter if it is turned on or off.

Due to the fact that it worked for one night with the first backup i am kinda driving crazy, cos ever since I can't get it to work again. I even tried to reinstall OS X from a backup with no success either.

I am wondering if there might be any connection to the fact, that my MBPr doesn't connect to the apple software update server either.

I am thankful for any advice.

add the nas hostname and IP to the MAC "hosts" file, that's how fixed it today.

to edit the host file on a MAC, best way is through terminal, google it.

Good luck

This is a good explanation of editing a Mac hosts file
https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/edit-hosts-file-mac-os-x/


Dual booting Yosemite/Mavericks: Stuck in Yosemite with an 'Install OS X' volume instead I've made a partition on my hard drive, so I currently have Macintosh HD (call it 1) and Macintosh HD 2 (call it 2).

I downloaded the Yosemite installer with my Mavericks install on 1, then ran it and selected 2 as the disk to install on. It worked fairly well and I'm running Yosemite without any problems.

But tonight I tried to switch over to Mavericks, so I rebooted and held down option. When the list came up, it contained recovery volumes for OS X 10.9 and 10.10. It had Macintosh HD 2 on it (my Yosemite partition), but not Macintosh HD. Instead of my Mavericks partition, it showed an 'Install OS X' volume. Selecting this shows the Apple logo with a progress bar under it, then boots into Yosemite.

I can view /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/ and see that everything is still there.

How can I boot back into my Mavericks install?

I also asked on the developer forums and got an answer there (iOS/OS X dev account required to view).

The solution was to boot into a recovery partition (⌘ + R), and change the boot disk from the Apple menu. It needed to be changed to my Mavericks install instead of my Yosemite install.

You can also boot into Yosemite > System Prefs > Startup Disk > Select Mavericks and tap Restart.


Can I delete my iCloud email account? I signed up with iCloud and I see that there is an @me.com email account associated with my account.  I don't have any interest in using email with iCloud - I use gmail for email.  Is there a way to remove email from my iCloud account all together?

Perhaps I am being paranoid, but I am afraid there might be security risks from having another email account around that might be used for Apple account change notifications.  Since I never check that account I wouldn't know if something seemed wrong.

It seems to be impossible to get rid of this account.

What I've done is:

Connect to my iCloud account (with my Apple ID, the same for the App Store and others).
Go to Mail.
In Preferences (top right), choose rules…
Add a rule to redirect all emails received at my @me.com address to my main email.

It can take several minutes to work, but I don't lose anything like that.

go to Settings, mail, then Icloud, and turn off Mail


How to disable Spotlight indexing when on battery? Every time I add a few MBss of files to my SD disk, Spotlight starts eating battery (per Activity Monitor Energy Impact) for one to several days indexing them.

How can I make indexing to turn off automatically when on battery power, and enable again when Macbook is powered from an AC outlet?

jherran's answer helps you with disabling Spotlight indexing, but does not address the part of the question about toggling automatically when AC power is connected or disconnected.

You could use sudo mdutil -i off / and sudo mdutil -i on / in conjunction with a listener for when AC power is disconnected. Using something like ControlPlane will satisfy your requirement for automatic toggling. It supports "Current power source" as an event to listen for. It is free and open source.

You might be against using a third party solution. To roll your own, try writing a script that loops checking pmset -g ps | grep -c 'AC Power' with a sleep interval in between. If AC is connected, it outputs 1 (0 otherwise).

Open your Terminal and type the following to disable.

sudo mdutil -i off /

To enable again, replace off with on.

For more info, you could type:

man mdutil


Disk Utility won't Unmount HD for formatting I have two internal drives in my 27" iMac (10.8.5). An SSD system disk and a 1TB SATA drive.

The HDD has been acting up recently, very slow performance, bad behavior etc. Tech Tool Pro and Disk Utility don't seem to be able to fix the drive, so I decided to wipe the data by a reformat and writing zeros to the entire drive.

Everytime I try and format, it tells me that the drive cannot be unmounted. I have rebooted a few times, and spent days running everything from TechTool Pro on it and it won't go.

$ diskutil list disk2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Everest                 4.0 TB     disk2s2

$ diskutil repairVolume /dev/disk2s2
Started file system repair on disk2s2 Everest
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required
Error: -69673: Unable to unmount volume for repair

$ diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ Everest /dev/disk2
Started erase on disk2
Unmounting disk
Error: -69888: Couldn't unmount disk

Any thoughts on how to get it to unmount and reformatted? Is there a way in Terminal to do this instead?

You can force unmount a drive by running the following Terminal command:

diskutil unmountDisk force /Volumes/VOLUMENAME

Replace VOLUMENAME with the name of a volume on the disk you are trying to unmount.

Following this, attempt to Erase/Partition the drive again in Disk Utility. Using the above command can interrupt file read/writes, which can cause file corruption. However, since you are erasing the drive anyway, this doesn't really matter in your situation.

Try to use

umount -f /Volumes/<drive name>/


How do I get Windows to assign a drive letter to my iPhone? I want to be able to move photos and videos from my iPhone onto my Windows PC, but the iPhone doesn't present itself like a compact camera. Because my existing import process works so well with normal compact cameras (they have drive letters!), I don't want to have to mess around with extra programs.

When I connect my iPhone, I don't get a new drive letter for it. Instead of e.g. K:\DCIM\800AAAAA I just get the very cryptic address Computer\Torbens iPhone 4\Internal Storage\DCIM\800AAAAA. Windows Explorer can navigate this path, but no programs can access the path.

How do I get Windows to assign a drive letter to my iPhone?

I am not interested in programs that can look into my iPhone and allow me to manually copy files from it to my harddisk. (iFunBox, DiskAid, Wifi photo transfer app, WinAmp - as mentioned in this recent question)
I want a drive letter! When I have that, I can continue to use my existing photo-importing applications that do everything with a single click! (Moving rather than copying, file renaming based on timestamp, etc.)

Is there some hack app that will make the iPhone present itself with a drive letter? This would probably not be a Windows application but rather an iPhone jailbreak app, but any solution is welcome.

I'm running Win7 and a jailbroken iOS 4.1.

I get a drive letter just fine under XP. Under XP a dialog pops up each time I plug it in, asking how it should be handled. By canceling it ends up being handled as a drive.
My guess is that there's a setting, probably related to cameras and photos, that will change how Windows 7 handles it by default. Unfortunately I've no Win 7 machine handy.

A couple of suggestions from Googling for answers:

Many people have solved the problem by deleting any photos on their iPhone that weren't actually taken with the iPhone. Anything received in email, saved to disk in Safari, etc. After clearing those out the device again appeared as a drive.

Reinstall the iPhone driver in Windows 7 by following instructions from Apple Support.

EDITED TO ADD WIN XP, AS REQUESTED

Getting Windows XP to Present Itself as a Drive-Like Camera
First, the way I have things set up, which may or may not affect how it works for you: I am running all of the XP service packs, updated regularly through Software Update, with no special drivers or applications. My account is an administrator on my PC. iTunes 10.1 is installed, though it is not involved with the camera stuff (it's possible that having iTunes installed does provide some kind of driver, I don't know). My iPhone is a stock iPhone 3GS, non-jailbroken, running iOS 4.2.1. Note that all of this worked identically with iTunes 9 and my phone running iOS 3.0.1.
Event Handling
The first time you attach your iPhone to your WinXP PC a dialog much like the following should appear:

Drive List
If you choose one of the Microsoft Office handlers, the Wizard, or another app like Photoshop, your phone  will not present itself as a camera (more on changing that behavior below). If you click Cancel then the dialog will disappear and the camera will become available.

Windows Explorer Media Directory
If you then double-click on the iPhone icon all of the images and movies are presented:

You can freely drag photos and videos out of the directory. You can drag stuff in, too.
Changing the Event Handler
If at some point you chose an event handler rather than clicking Cancel you can change how XP handles the iPhone. You'll need to get to the phone's Properties, which may require opening the Scanners and Cameras control panel. Click on the dialog's Events tab to see this:

If you change your current setting to Prompt then you'll get that first dialog I showed when you plug in your device. You can also choose Take no action if you want it to always behave like a drive.

I've successfully mapped a drive letter to the iPad on Win7 64 machine. Just install the Air Sharing app on the iPad and map using the Bonjour address.


Does macOS have equivalent command line tools like `lshw` or `lspci` for enumerating PCI hardware devices? The closest thing I know of is system_profiler but it spits out way too much unnecessary information and I don't have a good way to filter / transform that output.

What's the closest alternative to something like lshw or  lspci on  Mac OS X?

Try parsing the output of the ioreg command.

I tried ioreg -l | grep PCI and got a bunch of info.

You might want to try dspci console utility from the open-source DPCIManager project. I must warn you though, that the software is coming from the Hackintosh/OSx86 world and the DPCIManager.app offers extra functionality in addition to listing PCI devices that is not at all safe to run on a real Mac, so please avoid using anything from that package except the dspci utility which only does listing PCI devices in your system (like lspci in Linux).


Removing profile settings from a profile that no longer exists At some point in the past, I installed Snappli. At some point later, I removed it. However, some part of Snappli is still installed, because ifconfig.me and whatsmyip both report that I'm being proxy'd through Snappli (see below):

How do I remove the Snappli proxy settings from my phone, even though the Profile is gone?

My best tip would probably be to install the app again, with the profile and all of that, and then remove the profile again, then deleting the app and see if that helps.

It's hard to tell what might be causing the problem – you're sure there are no proxy settings in place anywhere and that the profile is deleted?

Edit: It seems there are some ghost settings you're unable to change. Your best chance would be to reset all the network settings (Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings), or restoring your iPhone to factory settings.

Just to confirm, you have gone into Settings > General and looked for a sub-section called Profiles? Proxy settings are set only through configuration profiles to my knowledge. If you see no section called "Profiles" then there are none installed.

Short of that you may have a device corruption. In such a case I recommend you follow Emil's advice above to Reset Network Settings. In a worst-case scenario you can Restore as new (not from iCloud backup) to ensure everything is new, though hopefully you can avoid that.


How does Do Not Disturb work in iOS with message Favorites? New in iOS 10 you can add a message favorite instead of just phone favorites. How does that work with Do Not Disturb's only allow notifications from favorites? If I add just a contact's phone but not their message info to my favorites will I only get calls from them in the middle of the night or will I receive message notifications as well? Asked another way, do I need to add each method of contacting a person to my favorites in order to get those notifications?

If their chat settings are not included in their Apple ID then you will need to add the corresponding info.

I do not have an iPhone and use Messages desktop version, so the only way would be to add my chat info in your contact settings for me to send messages when DND is enabled.

Best practices would be to add all levels of contact info, or ask every contact what info is part of their Apple ID, if you do not already know. That doesn't sound fun.

Keep in mind that it will still silence the alert for incoming messages.

If you want to completely allow a user to get through at all times, simply override all DND settings via Emergency Bypass.

NOTE: You have to enable Emergency Bypass for each contact individually.

How to turn on Emergency Bypass on iPhone and iPad

Launch Contacts from your Home screen.
Tap on the contact you want to enable Emergency Bypass for.
Tap Edit.
Tap Ringtone (for calls) or Text Tone (for texts).
Tap the Emergency Bypass switch. The switch should be green when
it's enabled.
Tap Done
Tap Done again.


Mid 2012 MBP shuts down claiming no power with charge at 30% or 40% or more I have two mid 2012 MBPs. Sometime last year they both started randomly shutting down and showing the 'please plug me in to power' image when trying to start them up. That would be fine if the batter was at 1% or less but this happens when the battery is at anywhere from 30% to as high as 48% full. The power cycle info says 500 cycles or so. Both of them do this. They are both patched current, always. I asked Apple they suggested NVRAM PRAM and SMC reset, as expected, which had no effect. Any ideas?

Your battery is shot.

A battery's life is determined more by age than the number of cycles.  Yes, number of cycles do play a part, but the biggest culprit is age.  In short, you have a 4 year old battery.  A 4 year old battery that was never used is going to perform about as well as a 4 year old battery with 500 cycles.

MATH FINDS TOP CULPRIT AS LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES AGE

As far as what you are seeing, this is not an abnormal symptom.  Your MacBook Pro has no sensor to be able to determine how quickly a charge will dissipate within the cell.  All it can do is measure the voltage under load and calculate how much charge is left.

As your battery ages, there is a build up of the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI).  This layer is what "transfers" the electrical charge from the chemical reaction.  As this layer builds, the performance degrades.  This layer continues to build from the time the battery is manufactured until the time it is recycled.  There's no stopping it.

In short,  your MBP is calculating that you have 30-40% of battery left; it's only a calculation as it cannot account for or measure the SEI layer buildup.

Just to provide you a reference, I am working on a Dell Precision M4300 laptop (installing FreeBSD).  The battery reports 100% and healthy.  If I unplug, I get about 30 seconds before the battery dissipates and the laptop turns off.  So, I have the same symptoms you do, except it's happening at 100% charge.  This laptop and battery are 8 years old so the behavior is not unexpected.  What would be unexpected is if the battery held any charge at this point.

The Good News

It's pretty easy to fix.  iFixit.com has an excellent guide:  Battery and Trackpad. Disassembling MacBook Pro 15" Retina 2012-2015 and the prices are relatively low (less than $45 on Amazon).

Disclaimer:  I have personally used two of these exact model batteries on MBP's and both are still running strong.

I had a consistent 20% shutdown. My battery was inflated and I got it replaced by Apple for 250€. However, even with the new battery, it shutdown exactly at 20%. Resetting the PRAM - CMD+Shit+P+R before boot - did the trick.


Can magnets harm an iPad? My kids were playing with some cool magnetic rocks and left them sitting on top of our iPad. This provoked some non-trivial discussion in our family as to whether this was a bad thing.

I grew up in the era of magnetic floppy diskettes, where sitting a magnet on one could cause you to lose important data. But the iPad, as far as I can tell, doesn't have any magnetic storage. It clearly does have magnet sensors, as that's how the Smart Cover turns it off and on, and I'd hate for magnetic rocks to desensitize said sensors, but I'm also thinking that it seems unlikely that magnets will cause data loss.

What are the risks, if any, of leaving medium-strength magnets (not weak, but not any kind of industrial super-magnet), sitting on top of an iPad? Assume that the screen is covered, so I'm not worried about scratching the glass.

You should be fine. As you note, there are magnets (which are actually fairly strong for their size) in the iPad and Smart Cover. There are no magnetic components aside from the Smart Cover attachment points and the unlock sensor—there's a magnetometer for the compass, but it doesn't use a magnet.

Furthermore, the whole magnets damaging hard drives thing is a bit of a myth. You can wipe them with magnets, but it takes a very powerful one, pretty much nothing you'd have in your home.

I just picked up my iPad off a shelf and it was behind a speaker. Half the screen is damaged. Let this be proof magnets will damage your iPad mini.


Bluetooth audio choppy/skips on El Capitan I'm using the music receiver bluetooth TP-Link HA100 and when doing streaming from Spotify or iTunes the audio has clicks in and out and skips like a scratched CD. Simply unusable. I'm on MacBookPro late-2011 El Capitan 10.11.2

This is a known issue, I already tried these unofficial solutions:

http://lifehacker.com/fix-your-bluetooth-audio-in-yosemite-with-this-terminal-1670380974

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/179209/90762

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7263274?start=0&tstart=0

but they don't work.

Note 1: the audio lags/skips seems to increase everytime I do something on Mac (that is, open an app, scrolling a page in Chrome, ...).

Note 2: no one of the above issues on iPhone and iPad

Note 3: while streaming from iPhone/iPad if I just enable bluetooth (not stream) on MBP the audio begins to lag!

It's a lot frustrating and I can't believe bluetooth con OSX is so much crappy and there's no bugfixes on the horizon! Someone can help me?

I have found yet another unofficial solution! it worked for me and i hope the same to you. i believe the macbook utilizes bluetooth in the background for handoff and FaceTime. i believe it searches occasionally for data or cues that are sent from secondary devices or stays quietly paired with a device you may already have (causing gaps in bluetooth connectivity). i signed out of FaceTime (disabling it) and disabled handoff. i have an iphone, and it seemed to create some kind of bluetooth interference. try this and see if it doesnt help or solve the issue

Just spoke with Apple Support, they gave me a cure for  Choppy Bluetooth Audio interference.  I have a Bowers and Wilkins T7 and this worked for me.

Power down your iMac.
Unplug all connected items from the iMac.
Unplug the power cord from the back of the iMac and wait 20 seconds.
Replug all items to the iMac (USBs, etc.), and then the power plug.
Hold down the ⌘⌥PR keys.
Power up your iMac, and continue holding down the keys.
When you hear the startup chime 3 times, release the buttons.

Wait till everything powers back up, and hopefully that is your problem solved.

I hope this helps.


Saved preferences resetting on restart I just bought a MacBook Pro with OS X Lion.

I am having a problem with all my saved preferences: for example, in my Finder "General Preferences", the new finder window shows setting keeps resetting each time I turn on my Mac.

I am having the exact same problem with the general system preferences regarding the restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps setting; I disabled it but when I restart my laptop, Lion keeps re-opening the programs that were opened in the previous session.

I am a first time Mac user and I am a bit lost with this problem :)

I think the confusion may be in this dialog:

Unchecking it works for the current restart but the next time it comes up its checked. It has a default state which doesn't seem to have a control in system preferences and may be getting mixed up with this related but different control:

No doubt others here will know more about this than I do but I understand how a new user might be confused.

As far as this: "lion keeps re-opening the programs that were opened in the previous session." you seem to not be reading the message.

The preference you are setting is when you close an app and reopen it.

You seem to be closing the machine down and then being surprised the apps that were open when you shut it down re-open.

Read the text you wrote above out loud slowly and I think you may see that one thing is not the same as the other.


macOS High Sierra on the App Store: the Learn More button doesn't work App Store > macOS High Sierra > Download

We could not complete your purchase.
You do not have enough space to install macOS High Sierra.
[ Learn More ]  [ OK ]

That [ Learn More ] button does nothing at all. I opened the Console app and filtered the messages using "App Store" and I found this:

Rejected request to open untrusted URL DABuyButtonLearnMoreURL.Yosemite

I'm running macOS Sierra 10.12.6

I had the same issue and I thought I had enough space but I didn't. You need at least 14.3GB I believe. It downloaded for me afterwards


I don't want to carry all of my old contacts on my iPhone. How could I select which groups to sync with iCloud? I have about 800 contacts in different contact groups on my iMac. Some of these groups are a sort of archives. I don't want to use all my contacts on my iPhone but still I don't want to delete the permanently from my iMac.

I could select groups for sync until iCloud arrived. Now I'm syncing everything on the air, and now I need to sync all my contacts with my iphone since there is no contact group selection in iCloud.

If you know any method, how could I choose which contact group to sync with iCloud, pls let me know.

Currently the only way to do this is by synching your contacts via iTunes. It's not possible via iCloud. I also want this feature. Please leave Apple feedback.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html

There is a way!  See this link https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4245237?start=0&tstart=0

Works great


What are pros and cons for MacPorts, Fink and Homebrew? I'm just migrating from Ubuntu Linux to Mac, and everything is new and I'm re-learning a lot of stuff.

On Linux I had the excellent apt-get to manage software packages. I googled for an alternative on Mac and found about MacPorts, Fink and Homebrew.

I will use this computer primarily to develop Ruby on Rails applications.

So, what are the differences between them? Which are the upsides and downsides? Which one is best maintained and has more packages?

Definitely Homebrew. I started with Fink, then switched to MacPorts (happier), then Homebrew (much, much happier). These are my reasons for using each (a pro list if you will):
Fink

Apt-based - feel right at home if you come from a Debian-based environment

MacPorts

Unlike homebrew do not depend on MacOS library that may change in the future.
Install everything in /opt/local
Nice variants system that lets you customise the build
Easy and intuitive port files, also allows you to add your own
supports many versions of OSX and macos going back to Tiger including PowerPC versions see other answer

Homebrew

Maximum leveraging of what comes with OS X. Unlike Fink or MacPorts, it does not require you to build/install ruby and libraries from scratch just to install some small Ruby-based tool.
Installs into /usr/local
Install without root access
Every installed package is cleanly sandboxed into its own cellar so you don't have stray files all over your system, just symlinks from bin, man, etc.
Has guides and automation to create your own formula files (ie. package descriptors)
Written in ruby and all formulas are concise ruby scripts

pkgin

Everything installed in /opt/pkg/
backed by pkgsrc community and Joyent
Known to work on NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, Solaris, Debian, Mac OS X, Minix

https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/install-on-osx/
http://pkgin.net/

Brew was completely smooth for me to use, so I'm unable to tell about its cons. Some disadvantages of MacPorts:

you have to install Xcode from the Apple Developer site, hence you must have an Apple developer account (which now requires credit card) and download almost 3.5 GB of stuff;
if port 873 (rsync) is blocked by your firewall, you'll have to manually configure the HTTPS protocol;
the HTTP(S) server from which packages are downloaded is (often) extremely slow (under 20 KiB/s yesterday; tested from a couple very reliable Gigabit connections in different countries) and may fail with error Operation too slow. Less than 1024 bytes/sec transferred the last 60 seconds, forcing you to redo everything from scratch.

There are several very popular questions about the first two points.


Bizarre problem with Safari: I can't click links in youtube Whenever I click on a video, or really any link at all on youtube nothing happens. To follow a link I've been right clicking->open in new tab. I think this is being caused by some sort of inconsistency with what javascript libraries are installed and what youtube expects me to have. I'm running safari 12.1.2. The issue seems to stem from an uncaught error in the 'onYtNavigate_()' function. I've pasted the console output below. Any suggestions? I'd like to be able to click youtube videos again haha.
[Error] TypeError: b.getDebugString is not a function. (In 'b.getDebugString()', 'b.getDebugString' is undefined)
    onYtNavigate_ (desktop_polymer_inlined_html_polymer_flags.js:20896:298)
    (anonymous function) (desktop_polymer_inlined_html_polymer_flags.js:8578)
    dispatchEvent
    Bb (webcomponents-hi-sd.js:76:366)
    dispatchEvent (webcomponents-hi-sd.js:144:259)
    fire (desktop_polymer_inlined_html_polymer_flags.js:9134:238)
    onEndpointTap_ (desktop_polymer_inlined_html_polymer_flags.js:12129:178)
    (anonymous function) (desktop_polymer_inlined_html_polymer_flags.js:8578)
    dispatchEvent
    Bb (webcomponents-hi-sd.js:76:366)
    dispatchEvent (webcomponents-hi-sd.js:144:259)
    _fire$$module$third_party$javascript$polymer$v2$polymer$lib$utils$gestures (desktop_polymer_inlined_html_polymer_flags.js:8830:177)
    OFa (desktop_polymer_inlined_html_polymer_flags.js:8854:355)
    click (desktop_polymer_inlined_html_polymer_flags.js:8851)
    _handleNative$$module$third_party$javascript$polymer$v2$polymer$lib$utils$gestures (desktop_polymer_inlined_html_polymer_flags.js:8819:208)

DOWNLOAD THAT
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204036
It worked for me


Fast way to download a video from an URL Is there an easy way to download a video from an URL to the device or to your Dropbox?

The only way I have managed to do that is using Mercury: manually copying the URL, going to the download manager and then pasting the URL there. Then, from Mercury I can save it to my camera roll or upload it to Dropbox.

Is there an easier way of doing this? Any way that doesn't involve copy/paste, either using Mercury or any other browse?

In addition to fiddling around in Mercury Browser:

I found a collection of ugly-looking spammy apps: Video Downloader. I tried the purple one by Appsneon, it seems to work fine.

It shows a download button on iOS video player overlay, when browsing through the app. This is more convenient than Mercury Browser's approach. I wish mainstream browsers would offer this option as well.


How to remove photos on my iPhone directly from iPhoto? I'm using iPhoto '11 (version 9.4.3) on a Mac running (10.8.5).

I often need to remove a lot of poor quality photos on my iPhone from within iPhoto (ex.: 50 photos to remove). I want to manage this process from within iPhoto because I have a global vision of what I'm destroying and the risk of error is lower.

I know how to remove photos within iPhoto, and this isn't my question.

I know that tranferred photo could be located within my library and then Photos > move to trash will really delete the selected photos.

But I would like to avoid the time waste and the risk of errors due to these 2 independant operations (total loss and duplicates).

Is there some hidden menu entry which permit to straight forward remove a bunch of photos without transferring them?

Perhaps not quite what you're asking, but Image Capture will quickly list the entire contents of the iPhone's library & allow single or multiple deletion [or indeed transfer] with shift/control select.

Once you import the photos from your iPhone to the iPhoto application, iPhoto should ask if you would like to delete those photos from your device (iPhoto).


Can home and end keys be mapped when using Terminal? The Home and End keys on a MacBook Pro can be emulated with Fn + ← or fFn + →.  Or when certain settings are changed, with the ⌘ Command key instead of Fn.
None of these works in Terminal.
As I frequently need to go to the beginning or end of the line and would also like to jump forwards or backwards by word.
How can I jump around on a line in Terminal?

To answer the one about how to get the beginning or end of the line, it appears that by default Terminal maps these keys to it:

shift+home → beginning of line, equivalent to the "home" key in normal terminals
shift+end → end of line, equivalent to the "end" key in normal terminals

If you want home and end to work the "normal" way (and not require shift), go to [Terminal menu] → Preferences → Profiles tab (or settings on some versions of OS X) → Keyboard sub-tab.

Then modify/add these keys to be the following "send string to shell"

home: \033[H
end:  \033[F

You can get the \033 part by hitting the escape key within the edit dialog input, if you need to add it.

Then home and end will work like normal again (phew).

Also note that "alt + ←" and "alt + →" by default in terminal map to word left and word right, another handy combo to remember.

In later versions of Mac OS X, if the terminal screen shifts up or down when you press the home/end key, the home key may need to be set to \033[1~ and the end key to \033[4~ to get the results you want (no shift needed).

Feel free to modify this answer to add more useful key bindings, as it is a community wiki.

here's the list in printable form, as desired :)

http://pastebin.com/uCqwn7qs

I also fixed a "bug" in the description. This is what you could originally read in the instructions:

ESC-d Kill from the cursor the start of the previous word, or if between words, to the start of the previous word.

This smells badly like a cut-and-paste mistake, since both partial sentences tell the very same thing. Telling from plain logic, first half must actually read "from the cursor to the start of the current word".


Is it possible to hide the name of the desktop icons? I know it is possible to hide the name by renaming the file/folder to something else. The problem comes with my cloud showing in the desktop. I want it to show and I don't want to change the names of my folders.

I made a cool icon set for the few things I've got in my desktop and the names there just don't fit.

If you want to just hide one filename or folder, the answer is kludgey but it works:
Insert 58 spaces in the beginning of the filename: the filename "disappears" from the desktop.  It still exists (you can Cmd-I or Finder to see it/change it), but it's no longer visible on the Desktop.  In actuality, it's probably showing the first 58 characters of the filename (the invisible spaces) and cutting off the rest, so technically it's not hiding the name, just truncating it, but anyway...  (The 58 may not be an exact number, but that's how many it took to hide "foo.app" on my 10.11.6 Mac.)

Using just Finder to hide filenames on the Desktop is (to my knowledge) not possible, but I would be happy to be proven wrong about that.

I realise you don't want to rename files and folders, but the only workaround I know of to "hide" the filenames is to rename them to a space " ".


How to stop my SSD "ejecting" from my iMac when in standby? I recently purchased an SSD drive for my 2009 27" iMac to replace the DVD Drive.

Everything installed fine, performance is good etc. However when the device (SSD) is put to "sleep", OS X sees it as ejected, and will not see it again until I pull the power from the iMac. Shutting down does not seem to help -- nor does restarting.

Things I've tried:

Reset the NVRAM -- after this it did show up without pulling the power, but then it disappeared again after going to slee[
resetting the SMC
Pulling the drive, and completely reseating it in case something wasn't quite installed right

None of which seemed to have helped. Support from the vendor suggested "Turn off sleeping of the hard disks". This seems poor since it leaves the HDD that is still in there spinning. Additionally, surely it's going to go to sleep when it goes to standby for the whole Mac.

Any suggestions/Thoughts?

have a look at:

http://www.mac-forums.com/apple-notebooks/273332-2nd-internal-hard-drive-ejects-sleep.html

It seems to be the caddy.


iPhone available space: significant difference between iTunes and iPhone I am trying to update my wife's iPhone from iOS 7 (.x.x) to 8 (the latest). I was trying through iTunes because the iPhone says only around 300MB is available. iTunes shows around 7GB as available space. But when I hit update, it complains that at least 770MB should be available and it is not.

Is this a known issue that iTunes reports a larger available space than iOS? I have read about the "Other" storage space problem, but this is about "Free" space.

Also, is there a workaround to reclaim this "free" space?

This is a iPhone 5S, latest iTunes (12.0.1.26) on OSX Yosemite (10.10.1)

iPhone:

iTunes:

I had the same problem too. My iPhone 6 showed free memory at less than 200mb and iTunes showed more than 5.6GB.

To correct this problem: go to your device (iPhone) and go to settings, iTunes & App Store, click on your Apple ID and select Sign Out. Go back and Sign in again. This is a lot simpler than restoring your backup.

Join Apple beta and you can get cuter iOS updates and have a decketed out phone without jailbreak and it will work also


Reset your PATH variable I stuffed up (basically wiped) my PATH variable.

Is there any way to reset it to the default?

I look at How do I reset the $PATH variable on Mac OS X?, but I find it very confusing.  As far as I know I stuffed up my ~/.profile file.

I have the following in my ~/.profile:

PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin
PATH=$PATH:~/bin

The first PATH declaration overrides any existing PATH setting (it doesn't include $PATH). The path used is the OS X default.

The second line appends ~/bin to the PATH and it is a personal preference, not a default.

After edit, restart your session — or use command source ~/.profile to activate the changes immediately.

Resetting your terminal will work. It will reset your basic configurations.

Reset your terminal. From top navigation go to Shell >> Reset.


What's the aperture/sensor size for the mid-2011 27" iMac FaceTime HD camera? I'm working on a project where I need to convert from pixels to mm and need to find the aperture or sensor size on the FaceTime HD Camera.  Specifically, I have the mid-2011 27" iMac.  I can't seem to find any detailed technical specifications on the newer FaceTime camera.  Anyone privy to these details?

tl;dr - As a starting off point, eyeballing it I'd estimate around ƒ/2.2 - ƒ/2.8 aperture.

This isn't an exact answer, I put the iPhone 7+ front camera (which has a ƒ/2.2 aperture and a 'focal length in 35mm' of 32mm) next to the 720p FaceTime HD camera on a macbook. Eyeballing it, the image on the mac seems to be the same or maybe ~5% smaller in FOV. So I estimate around ƒ/2.2 - ƒ/2.8 , maybe ƒ/2.4 in aperture.

On the iMac's features page it is stated that:

  The built-in 720p FaceTime HD camera lets you make video calls that are so clear, it seems like everyone’s in the same room.

This means that the FaceTime HD Camera can offer you a 1280x720 resolution as a hardware maximum, but, it's the software you'll be using it with, which will decide the resolution.


sudo: command not found Every time I try to use a sudo or ssh command, it returns with this error:

when:~ jackson1442$ sudo [insert any command here]
-bash: sudo: command not found

I was messing with Python installs, and am not sure what I did to cause this. How can I permanently fix this?

macOS Sierra 10.12.4 16E195
MacBook Pro 2016
13" Touchbar

EDIT: here's the path:

when:~ jackson1442$ echo $PATH
’/usr/local/bin:??

Here is .bash_profile

# Setting PATH for Python 2.7
# The original version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH

# Setting PATH for Python 3.6
# The original version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH

# Setting PATH for Python 3.5
# The original version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH
export PATH=’/usr/local/bin:��

Your PATH is hosed!

First check your .bash_profile file with:

/usr/bin/nano ~/.bash_profile

Prepend lines containing something like export PATH="/... " with a # to comment them out. Save the file with ctrlO and exit nano with ctrlX

Then check /etc/paths with: /bin/cat /etc/paths.

It should look like this:

/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin

You can edit the file with /usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/nano /etc/paths if required.

If everything is fine enter source ~/.bash_profile or close the Terminal window and open a new one.

Now sudo should work again. Then check all #export PATH=... lines in your .bash_profile for potential errors. You may add them to your question to get help here.

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


Are there Anti-Theft apps for iPad similar to cerberus for Android I have been looking for some anti-theft applications for iPad, like the wonderful Cerberus application for Android which enables a lot of features to recover your lost or stolen Android mobile for only 2/3€. Avast anti-theft also worked perfectly in my Android phone and its free.

I would like to know if you have tested any of them in you Apple device and could give me a hint before buying it. It will be a plus if it could detect if the 3G microSIM card is removed, and send an SMS to another mobile like Avast anti-theft application for Android does.

I don't mind about price, the more features the better.

I would like the following options:

Remote control of the lost/stolen device (get SMS, get files, capture screen, turn on camera..)
Possible remote control by sending SMS.
Check for location of stolen device via remote turning on GPS or using 3G or any other method.

Apple makes their own anti-theft app, and it seems to be a fairly reasonable app as far as features. You can find out more about it here.

As of iOS 6, and the latest version you can use it to remotely (among other things):

Lock your device
Erase your device (the app doesn't work after this)
Display a message to the user
Play a sound
Geolocate the device
Get directions to the device
Put it in Lost mode, and allow the finder to call you while the device is locked (iPhone only)

Note that it has to have a internet connection, in order to communicate with whatever you are looking it up with. Also, it must have GPS for an accurate location - although wifi only devices that are connected to wifi should display their location, but it will be more general.

This app is the best one for iOS devices. Others have the limitation of sandboxing that Apple uses for security reasons. But sandboxing limits the features other anti-theft (it should be called "Recovery") apps can have.

There is a new application name iAntiTheft, which help you to protect you phone when theft try to steal your phone.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iantitheft/id1026601065?mt=8

Basically it has some features.

Power: Alarm when lightning cable is un-plugged.
Motion: Alarm when device is moved.
Pocket: Alarm when phone is picked out from pocket.
Earpod: Alarm when ear-phone is un-plugged.
Noise: Alarm when device hears a noise.

You could read it more on the iTunes link. Even it does not suitable to your requirement, but it might help you to protect your phone, save your money.


Finder: Select a file after Copy & Paste When I copy and paste a file in Windows, the last inserted file is selected automatically in the destination folder. Then I can (for example) press F2 to rename it.

When I copy and paste a file in OS X, the last inserted file is NOT selected in the destination folder. When I want to rename it, I have to look for it, select it and press Enter.

Is there a setting (or a shortcut) in OS X to select (or highlight) the last inserted file(s)?

If you don't have a current selection, the Paste action will select the new pasted file or folder. Therefore, make sure you don't have a current selection when pasting and the file or folder will be selected when you paste.

A quick way to deselect any currently selected items before pasting is ⌥⌘A. If you'd like more automation in this, you can use Keyboard Maestro or equivalent to intercept a ⌘V and press ⌥⌘A first if you wish this to occur every time you paste.

This answer applies to OS X 10.11.5 and I have also tested it in OS X 10.11.6b1.

I'll probably be down voted in this answer, but I tried in my El Capitan as the OP described and it never ends selected, it does not work as Windows. As long I still think somethings are still easier in Windows, an O.S. it's about a culture, the usability solution, and may be a better idea dance as the music is playing. The best way to do this task is by OS X way, after paste the file, to click on it and click again (not double click, just click wait click) to edit the filename. The Mac OS X is an interface that has a lot of the old classic O.S. that was made for mouse, not keyboard, unlike the Windows that has a lot of DOS still in the "blood".

Personally, I work with two windows opened and drag-and-drop (alt to copy) as even Bill dreamed when he copied Apple's O.S..


Can a webpage appear in iOS Safari without any Safari UI even if someone visits the URL in the browser? I have a web app added to the home screen of the iphone. is it possible to open this web apps added to the home screen if someone visits a URL in safari.

i'm aware that the web app added to the home screen is actually running in safari, but i want to open that web app .. is there any custom iphone specific URL to call a web app ?

Example : i bookmarked www.example.com on my iphone and the app has all the required META tags to run as a webapp. now if someone visits www.example.com in the browser, it should detect if the app has been added to the home screen and if it is, it should open it.

is this possible ?

The whole point is that i want to open the app without any Safari UI even if someone visits my URL in the browser.

P.S i know the use of window.navigator.standalone - but it does not help in Safari.

When you launch a web app by entering the URL in Safari it runs in the Safari app. But when you launch a web app from the springboard (home screen), it runs in different Safari app. Hence the lack of Safari UI in the that case. What you want isn't possible. And it's actually a good thing because the Safari UI offers option you might need to use ('mail link to this page', 'Tweet', 'Print', ...).

What you want to do may be possible through some kind of hack if you jailbreak, although I doubt it.

This is not possible. A webapp in Safari must show the Safari UI, but a web app launched from the springboard doesn't necessarily have to show this. However, though, in the version of iOS that is not yet released, there's this feature called Smart App Banners that alerts the user if the website has a native app counterpart. Unfortunately, you're talking about a web app, so this won't apply, but I just thought I'd throw that out there if you're thinking about going native...

From Techcrunch,

  Apple will now show a link to the App Store (or to the app, if you have already installed it) when you open a site that also offers a mobile app. Apple calls this feature “Smart App Banners.”


How can I troubleshoot no audio via Thunderbolt HDMI connecting to HDTV? I have a 13" late '11 MBP OS X Lion 10.7.5 I am trying to hook up to my LG HDTV with a Thunderbolt HDMI cable.  Getting the display onto the TV is a snap.  The audio, however, is not working.  The thing I'm noticing is in the Sound tab the TV is not an option for Sound Effect, Output, or Input, only internal speakers and aggregate device.

I have updated my software, reset SMC and PRAM, gone to Audio MIDI Setup (where the TV isn't optional), plugged the Thunderbolt in while the TV was off/on, etc.    Can someone tell me why the TV is not appearing in the Sound options?

That model of MBP supports audio through that adapter, so you should be getting sound. It could be any number of things. I think your problem is on the TV side, but Here are a bunch of things to try:

First, make sure you're connected to your TV and getting an HDMI video signal to the  video input you've selected.

Go to your MIDI Audio Setup again and make sure that your thunderbolt output is set to "Use this device for sound output." Highlight it, and go down to the setup (gear icon below) to set it.

From your Apple Menu, open your System Preferences and choose Sound. Try setting your "Use audio port for:" to Sound Input, as it may be hogging the audio out channel and not letting your thunderbolt use it. Make sure your system volume is turned up there too.

If you have various sound drivers installed and showing up in Audio MIDI Setup, just leave them alone for now, and DO NOT use any aggregate devices. Select your thunderbolt output and make sure the volume sliders are turned up. You should see the speaker icon next to that audio output selection too. We're not interested in "Sound Effects" in this case, so don't worry about that.

Recheck ALL your connections.

Make sure your volume is turned up on the MBP.

THe content you're trying to play probably has a volume control of it's own too. Make sure it's turned up.

And make sure that your TV volume is up, and not accidentally on Mute.

IF your TV's set up to play audio through your amplifier (surround, etc.) make sure your amp is on, set to TV as it's input, and volume is up. Don't turn these all up to max! When you find the culprit, you don't want to blow anything out.

Make sure your TV isn't in SAP mode.

Check to make sure you don't already have an audio source plugged into the audio jacks for that input on your TV. HDMI only on that TV input.

Check the setup options for Audio in the app you're using to play your content. If it's a movie, for instance, and you're using VLC as your player, check your Audio Device setup in the Audio menu option.

Make sure your TV isn't setup to expect audio from it's Stereo input jacks, as if you were connecting via component video and audio. Light up the menu options on your TV, and just double check your Audio options settings. Maybe that input port on your TV is pre-set to expect only separate stereo jacks on that input. Just a thought. You might try another HDMI input on your TV just as a test.

Try a different HDMI cable if you've got one.

That's all I can think of. I have a feeling one of these will solve the problem.

System Preferences → Sound → Samsung HDMI is the solution.


What causes all iWork apps to have blank, unusable documents after a reinstall? After deleting and re-installing the apps, I can't use iWork. Specifically, the document area is always empty, no matter if I create a new document or open an existing one. This applies to Pages, Numbers and Keynotes.

I can guess there's something in the document, because the mouse pointer changes when I move it over the empty area. So it seems like a display error. What can I do to resolve this?

I had a little trouble getting iWork '09 to work correctly on Mountain Lion.

When I tried to create a new document from template chooser, it was blank, and I could not do anything.

When I tried to open an existing file, it said it "file  could not be opened".

This applied for Numbers, Pages, and Keynote.

This is how I solved it,

Moved the iWork Folder in Applications to Trash.
Removed /Library/Application Support/iWork '09
Re-Installed iWork (I had installation Media).
Then installed the Mountain Lion iWork updates.

Hope that works for you.


Bluetooth Not Available? Mac OS X 10.6.4, MacBook Pro, Apple Magic Trackpad.

The trackpad is unresponsive. Right-clicking on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar shows me gray text that says "Bluetooth not available".

I don't see a system preference item in which to fight with this, but I don't see anything relevant.

According to this article, resetting the System Management Controller might to the trick.

Here's how to Reset the SMC on Apple's support site.

I fixed it by

shutting down the machine
removing battery
keep power button pressed for 10 sec
start machine again


DIY Fusion Drive: Adding Recovery HD to a CoreStorage Volume Group After creating a "DIY Fusion Drive" using the methods below in 10.8, I'm now wondering how to add a RecoveryHD partition to the internal drive.

Here's what I did to create a Logical Volume Group across two physical volumes (128G SSD/750GHD)

(make a clone / backup of all your data first)
diskutil list (take note of the disk## of the two drives. In my case: disk0/disk1)
diskutil corestorage create fusion_volume_group disk0 disk1
diskutil corestorage list (take note of the Logical Volume Group UUID)
diskutil corestorage createVolume <UUID> jhfs+ FusionHD 749g
restore the clone onto the FusionHD

This worked great, but now my RecoveryHD is gone.  I'd like to add it back (it's on the external drive I cloned from my original HD)

Here's what the partition layout looks like right now:

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         119.7 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         749.3 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               650.0 MB   disk1s3
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS FusionHD               *744.5 GB   disk2

Does anyone know the diskUtil commands to add the recovery HD?  Ideally after the fact, which is where I'm at now?

You'll need to partition the drives first, putting the Recovery partition on one of your physical drives. It can't be part of the Fusion drive as its unlikely you can boot directly into a Core Storage logical volume (you need a boot loader separately).

Take note of the partition structure in this Ars Technica article about the Fusion drive.

The best way to do this is probably to start fresh by reinstalling Mountain Lion on either the SSD or HDD, then repeat the Fusion process with just the proper partition.

Once you've done a standard install, check your partitions by running diskutil list, which should give output similar to this:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            119.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

Make note of the identifier of the Macintosh HD partition (disk0s2 in this case).

Then do the same steps you performed before, but change the diskutil corestorage create fusion_volume_group command so to specify the disk0s2 (or whatever the equivalent in your case is), and the identifier of the drive you didn't install OS X on. The resulting command should be similar to diskutil corestorage create fusion_volume_group disk0s2 disk1 but make sure you've got the identifiers correct. The key is that we want to make a volume group out of just the Macintosh HD partition, not the whole drive (so that the EFI and Recovery partitions don't get wiped out). Then follow the rest of the procedure as you did before.

Here's a video outlining the process, plus some benchmarks : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_odnNpv-FQ

Commands you'll need in order:

diskutil list

diskutil cs create Fusion diskx diskx

NOTE: You can replace Fusion with whatever you'd like to name your Logical Volume Group

diskutil cs list

diskutil coreStorage createVolume YOUR_DEVICE_ID_HERE jhfs+ "Macintosh Fusion" 100%

NOTE: You can replace "Macintosh Fusion" with whatver you want to name your drive. Remember to use ""'s if you want a space in your name like we did, otherwise you do not need them.

After installation is finished, open terminal and turn of indexing:

sudo mdutil -i off

If you would like to revert back to 2 separate drives, boot into the installer again, open Terminal and type:

diskutil cs delete YOUR_DEVICE_ID

You will then be able to format them however you'd like using Terminal or Disk Utility


Quick Look support for non-native video files (.avi, .mkv) on Mavericks In the past, we've been able to get codecs for DivX/XviD/MPEG4 and support for containers like AVI, MKV in Mac OS X's Quick Look feature using Perian (as per this question).

As noted on the Perian site, development has ceased, and future versions may or may not continue to work. It seems with the upgrade to OS X 10.9 "Mavericks", the OS or Quick Look API has changed sufficiently that Perian no longer works.

Are there any alternatives? Ideally a one-app-does-all like Perian, but even a list of individual codecs and/or plug-ins for video container files would be useful.

NB: This question isn't about video players—there are many that support more than those playable via the built-in QuickTime player. This question is about codecs/plug-ins for QuickTime on OS X to allow it and Quick Look (and apps which rely on the OS to play videos) to open/play video files/formats lacking native support.

I've uploaded QuickLook and Spotlight plugins here: https://github.com/Marginal/QLVideo/wiki . These allow Finder to display thumbnails, static previews, cover art and metadata for most types of video files, including .asf, .avi, .flv, .mkv, .rm, .webm, .wmf etc.


How do I search for apps on iOS 14? Prior to iOS 14 it was possible, from any of the home pages, to flick down and search for an app. For example, with a simple workflow consisting of

flick, "p", "c"

to find PCalc.
But since installing iOS 14 this capability seems to have been lost. When I take those steps now I'm unhelpfully offered things like the website of the "Porsche Club of America" or the Presbyterian Church (sites I've never visited and have no interest in) or a stock ticket for PCA (whatever that is, I don't even have stocks or use the stocks app). And if I type out "pcalc" and hit Search I get an App Store link to a version I don't want, and useless web links about the app:

In order to find an app now it seems I need to run through all of my home screen pages in order to get to something called the App Library:

page, page, page, page, [view I don't need], "p", "c"

Is this now the only way to find apps?
How do I search for apps in iOS 14? Is the App Library now the only way to do this?

PCalc is my top result for a search for ‘pc’ on iOS 14.
If you've only just updated to iOS 14, your device will likely still be indexing. This is probably the same issue as macOS where Spotlight search is very wrong right after an OS upgrade.

If you go to the right on the Homescreen, there you can also find all your apps and you can also search for them.


Upgrading brew in El Capitan I just upgraded to El Capitan, and when I tried updating brew I got the following error:

$ brew update
Error: The /usr/local directory is not writable.
Even if this directory was writable when you installed Homebrew, other
software may change permissions on this directory. Some versions of the
"InstantOn" component of Airfoil are known to do this.

You should probably change the ownership and permissions of /usr/local
back to your user account.
  sudo chown -R $(whoami):admin /usr/local

Before I proceed with the chown recommendation, given that El Capitan just came out, is that the right way to proceed here? Why is this step necessary, and what are any potential undesirable consequences of running this command?

In case it helps, I found two issues about El Capitan in brew: 40837 and 41665 but a solution to this problem wasn't immediately clear. What can I do to continue to use brew in El Capitan reliably?

I mean they give you the solution right there. I had the same problem and I just ran:

  sudo chown -R $(whoami):admin /usr/local

and it worked.

the system integrity protection needs to be disabled.
You can do it with this.

sudo nvram boot-args="rootless=0";osascript -e 'tell app "loginwindow" to «event aevtrrst»’

This disables System Integrity Protection system wide. I believe you can also do it from the Recovery Mode. You still have to type in your root password when doing things with sudo, but you aren't locked out by SIP. You also don't then go opening up directories inadvertently trying to set permissions.


Is there an iOS timelapse app that saves frames to camera roll? I'm looking for an app that will save individual frames to the camera roll as it goes, at something like a 1-5 second interval. I'm having trouble finding any apps that don't expect you to use them to make the final video; I'd rather do that at home on the computer where I can use the images along with the ones off the SLR.

The pro version of Joby's camera app "GorillaCam Pro" will do this.


Lost pictures in iPhoto I lost all of my pictures from my iPhoto after updating it to the newest version. How do I find them?

Have you pointed iPhoto to your old library (In iPhoto: File>Switch to Library)?

I also recall that it said: "The photo library needs to be upgraded to work with this version of iPhoto." when I updated. Did yours do this? I notice also that there is a quit option, did you just click through thinking it was junk?

All you have to do to get the photos back is hold down option and command keys while opening iPhoto and then click on rebuild database. They are all there... YAY


How to find devices on my local network through their IP address I have a local network powered by a Time Capsule, and connected to 4 or 5 macs. There are other devices on the network too. (Printers, IP Cameras, etc). Is there a way to list the devices on the local network - and their IP addresses?

I've seen this Q/A How do I know the IP addresses of other computers in my network?

but the responses do not show what is what - just a list of IP addresses.

If you have Android or iOS devices running on the same network, you can install a FREE app called Fing and list all devices connected and their MAC addresses and IPs.

I bought this software. It works ok.

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/36478/inet


Does HTML5 offline webapp still work in Safari / iPad / iPhone? When I search Google about HTML5 offline features I can only find some answers dated 2010 / 2011. Nothing recent appears.

Besides the web app behaves erratic on iOS: sometimes it will work, even when navigating several times to cached pages, and then, all of a sudden, it "decides" it needs Internet connection and then, impossible to reload the home page from either the home screen icon, of from an URL in Safari. "Not connected!".

I'm using a manifest file called "example.appcache" and the related mime type is duly declared on my IIS 7 server.

Does someone have recent answers?

It is still supported. You better check your code again


Can't open text file from Finder without extension even though execute flag is not set Running Big Sur 11.3.1
I've got loads of text (UTF8) data files coming in from another Mac that I'd like to just double click or drag and drop to BBEdit or TextEdit. The files have no file extension and I'm not supposed to be changing the names unless I work from duplicates. The files can be opened from a file dialog but that's a bit tedious. When I drop on BBEdit I get messages that say the file cannot be opened because the developer is unknown and "macos cannot verify that this app is free from malware". That's an absurd message for a text file. Any thoughts on fixing this? (already tried chmod -x)

When I drop on BBEdit I get messages that say the file cannot be opened because the developer is unknown and “macOS cannot verify that this app is free from malware”. That’s an absurd message for a text file. Any thoughts on fixing this?

You’re right, it is an absurd message, and unfortunately, it can happen with any file that you’ve downloaded from the Internet. It doesn’t have to have the executable ‘bit’ set.
The ‘fix’ for this would have to come from Apple.
However, in the meantime, the only thing you can do is remove the Quarantine flag:
xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine '/the path/to/The File'
For more information about this bug, see:
Serious flaw in macOS: quarantine can stop you from opening documents – The Eclectic Light Company

To open files from unknown developers you should enable the settings for this .

Open the file and see the unknown developer message and click ok .
Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Security & Privacy, then click General.
You can grant an exception for a blocked app by clicking the “Open Anyway” button in the General pane. This button is available for about an hour after you try to open the app.

If this didn't work , download VSCode on your mac and open it then drag the text file into vscode .


Can I delete a file from being shown in the 'recents' area of the Files iOS app? I am trying to remove some files out of the 'recents' view of the files iOS app without actually deleting the file.

My 'recents' list is currently too long, for this view to be of any help for me at this point. Ideally, I can curate individual items that aren't relevant and keep the rest of the list, but if needed - can I just purge all recents and start cleanly?

No - you can't edit or suppress one item - just open new files and the one that's current will be less recent.
Yes - You can wipe all the items and start fresh.

Open the Files app. Go to Browse tab. You'll get a list of the Locations you've authorized Files to access: iCloud, Google, etc. Your Recents tab displays recently viewed files from any authorized drive - not just iCloud.

Tap the three dots "..." in the upper right hand corner of the screen and select "Edit" from the popup menu that will appear.  To clear the Recents view for any drive turn access off by tapping the Green Button. This clears the Recents view. You can then turn access back on by tapping the button again.  A little kluggy but it works.

AFAIK this is still not possible. To remove the recent files just use the menu item at the end of the list.