In Safari, there is a lag for the Open Location and New Tab shortcuts. I started noticing this about a month ago that when I hit CMD+L or CMD+T, there is about a second or so lag to when it actually does something.

I verified it's not a memory problem, as it happens after a restart. Internet searches didn't come up with anything.

I'm using OS X 10.10.3 and Safari 8.0.6.

Launch "Console" and have it running side by side with Safari. See if entries about "IMKServer" appear when the delay happens:
If you see similar entries try following below: https://gist.github.com/wkrsz/3d5ff7f908a180b87498
Steps from the article:

Reboot into system restore mode (+R immediately after boot)
Navigate to Utilities > Terminal
Enter the command csrutil disable
Reboot
Open Terminal
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false && launchctl remove $(launchctl list | grep -oE 'com.apple.PressAndHold.+$')
sudo chmod 000 /System/Library/Input\ Methods/PressAndHold.app/Contents/MacOS/PressAndHold
Reboot
You can choose reboot back into restore mode and issue crsutil enable again to re-enable rootless mode.

It's originally from Github user squeeb: https://gist.github.com/squeeb/5a9dd082cae1b2d753a0 – I just forked the article to fix a typo in one command.

This happened to me. And this fixed it for me.

Preferences -> Search -> uncheck "Show Favorites".


Time Capsule will not allow allow a guest network in Bridge mode. Why? My 2 terabyte Time Capsule used to allow a guest wifi network but since I had to switch to bridge mode to accommodate my cable internet provider (while installing an Exchange server w/o a static ip address) I no longer have the guest option.

Why?

Is there a workaround?

When placing the Time Capsule in Bridge mode, you are turning off NAT, and IP operations.

The ability for guests to be able to get to the Internet but not be able to access the home network was a result of access rules that stated the IP range that supports the guest network are not allowed to talk to the other internal network.  It is possible to do such a thing using a technology known as private-VLANs, but I don't think the Time Capsule has that sophisticated of code.  So, when we put our router into bridge mode, we become one layer 2 ethernet bridged network - that is bridged to the Access Point - within one IP network.

There does not appear to be the code necessary to do layer 2 (ethernet/wireless ethernet) separation and security.  It is doable, but apparently not in the Time Capsule.

There is a work around - check out:
https://www.thegeekpub.com/5191/use-airport-extreme-guest-network-bridge-mode/


Why is always on Hey Siri only available on the iPhone 6S? At the latest unveiling by Apple and mentioned in this post, they announced a new feature on the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus: you can have 'Hey Siri' enabled always rather than just when plugged into a power source.  After downloading iOS 9 to my iPhone 6, I optimistically checked to see whether this feature was present in the settings, but to no avail - 'Hey Siri' is still restricted to when the device is plugged into a power source.  Yet, surely this is a software-related matter rather than anything to do with the hardware.  Why is the ability to have 'Hey Siri' enabled when not plugged into a power source restricted to the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus? Has Apple made any explanation of this, or is there some other evidence which accounts for this?

The best you can do is to use an external battery pack and then it will work even on the six :)

In addition I actually like the way it works now on an iPhone 6, because when I go to bed I just say 'hey Siri good night' and I can verify that my phone is plugged in if Siri replies

The feature IS AVAILABLE ON iPHONE 6 as well! (Provided you are running at least iOS 9.)

To enable, simply go to Settings > General > Siri and choose Allow Hey Siri.


High Sierra Freezes on Login I have a rMBP (late 2012 model) that I recently installed High Sierra on and enabled FileVault (this has apparently been known to cause some similar issues on older version of OSX, but I found no work around with High Sierra).

Currently when I try to log into my standard user on boot up, I get a progress bar that get to ~75% progress and then freezes (I have left it in this state overnight with the hopes that it was just slow - no luck).

Restarting the computer in recovery mode (cmd+R) causes a similar issue, where the progress bar gets to about 50% and then freezes (again I've let it sit here overnight with no progress), meaning I cant use the disk utility to repair the disk.

Safe mode (shift on startup) also doesn't do anything - progress bar freezes at ~75% on logging in.

Resetting the PRAM and SMC also don't appear to do anything.

Booting in single user mode (cmd+S) lets me attempt to repair the disk manually using:

/sbin/fsck -fy/

But it repeatedly returns the error:

warning: apfs_keylocker.pr_block_count is zero for encrypted fs (0x403)
** The volume /dev/rdisk1s1 could not be verified completely.
apfs_vfstop_unmount:1405: fake mount <ptr> going away

Running verbose mode (cmd+V) on startup runs until it reaches:

en3: promiscuous mode succeeded
IOConsoleUsers: time(0) 0->0, lin 0,lik 1,
IOConsoleUsers: gIOLockState 3, hs 0, bs 0, now 0, sm 0x0
Setting BTCoex Config: enable_2G:1, profile_2g:0, enable_5g:1, profile_5g:0

Where it locks up and freezes.

I have also tried reinstalling OSX from a bootable USB drive and via WiFi. In the case of the USB installer, the progress bar, once again, gets to ~75% and freezes. Using the WiFi method, I get a grey screen to appear with a pinwheel that spins for about 3 seconds before freezing and crashing.

From reading various forum posts, it seems like either my harddrive has finally died or FileVault and High Sierra aren't playing nice together. Ideally there is some work around that I've missed, but I do have backups, so I'm okay with wiping the harddrive completely, but as of now, I don't even see a way of doing that.

Any/all advice or input is appreciated and thanks in advance for any help!

I upgraded to High Sierra (iMac 27″ late 2013). I worked without problems for 5 days. Then the disaster: progress bar that gets to ~75% progress slowly (very very slowly) and then freezes.

I tried:

restart in safety Mode
reset PRAM
check HD with Disk Utility (no problems detected)
restart in recovery Mode and reinstall High Sierra from partition

but there was the same problem (progress bar that gets to ~75% progress and then freezes)

Yesterday I boot my iMac from an external HD (with Sierra OS) and now I'm working with this (I reinstalled only Adobe Suite).

I think that the solution is reinstall Sierra.

I guess your disk is corrupted very badly the only way to format your disk is to ask a friend to give their Mac to you and buy a thunderbolt To Thunderbolt port and then connect these to your friend's and your Mac and then restart your broken Mac in Target display mode by following this guide:Erase MacBook hard drive without OSX disc


My MacBook Pro periodically displays ads in a banner on the top right that says "Breaking Apple News" I have OSX 10.9.5.  It seems to happen once or twice within a few minutes after I come out of sleep.  A smallish banner on the top right kind of slides in place.  It's always text that starts with "Breaking Apple News" and then it advertises something.

Is this Malware, or did Apple really stoop to this level?  If it's really Apple SW doing this, is it at least optional to disable it?  I paid for my MacBook Pro.  I don't think slide in ads are appropriate here.

You may have accidentally allowed a website to send you push notifications. If you use Safari, go into Preferences > Notifications, and see if you've allowed any sites to give you notifications.

The sliding banner in the upper right of my MacBook Pro was a nuisance, too. To eliminate it, I clicked the apple icon in the upper menu bar and selected "preferences". In preferences, select "notifications". In notifications, highlite each item (such as Pinterest) from the left display box and un-check it in the right display area. You must do this for each site that is appearing in the sliding ad boxes on your machine. They will appear in the left display box when you go to notifications. I am running High Sierra OS


Leaving macbook plugged in and on 100% all the time So for the past few years, I've been under the impression that with any modern macbook (e.g., 2015 and later), it's better for the battery health to leave it plugged in as often as you can since the battery deteriorates based on cycle count, so if you leave it plugged in, it's not using the battery and thus not increasing the cycle count. Then I saw this article from last summer https://www.macworld.com/article/3564563/dont-keep-your-mac-laptop-charged-to-100-percent-all-the-time-heres-why.html that seems to contradict what I've seen suggested the past few years, which is recommending that your unplug your laptop daily and let it drop to 30-40%.
So I am confused on what advice to follow. Each dichotomous suggestion seems to have a basis, but which one is valid?

The Macworld article reflects best practice.  The battery is designed to be used.
I wouldn't be too concerned about dropping the charge to 30% every day.  Even dropping to 80% will help.  For a long healthy life the battery should be used.
Of course, if you keep it plugged in all the time you don't have to be worried about keeping the battery healthy!
Just to say it again: The battery is designed to be used.


How can I keep my Mac awake AND locked? I want to leave my Mac awake overnight so it syncs 4GB of data from Dropbox. I need to prevent the machine from going to sleep because that pauses the Dropbox sync

I've been using Caffeine to keep the computer awake, but it also keeps the computer unlocked which is insecure.

I need a method to keep my Mac awake (so that Dropbox can sync overnight) but also locked (so no one can read my email). It'd be great if this method also turned off the screen (to preserve power), but honestly that's not even 100% necessary.

In System Preferences > Energy Saver, check the box for "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" (on laptops, this is under the Power Adapter tab)
In System Preferences > Security & Privacy, check the box for "Require password after sleep or screen saver begins" and set the delay in the dropdown menu to "immediately"

Now, you can hit command-option-power to turn off the display without sleeping the computer, and doing anything that turns on the display (like hitting a key or clicking a mouse button) will prompt you for your account password.

On newer macs without the eject key, please use control-shift+power instead.

You can try "Lock Me Now" app from the app store. It gives a pretty neat way to lock the mac.


AirPlay option disappeared? I have the AppleTV connected via WiFi. I tried AirPlay via WiFi using my iPhone and it mirrored perfectly. The next day, the AppleTV was sleeping before I turned it on using the Apple Remote. However, the option to mirror my iPhone (or even my iPad and MacBook) is not there anymore! I tried using the AppleTV via the remote and works fine, it's just that the AirPlay option is gone.

Why is that?

Unplugging the AppleTV from the power source and plugging it back in got the AirPlay option back. Is there a way to make sure this doesn't happen again ?

Edit: Using an Ethernet cable fixes the problem, however I do not wish to keep it wired. Why would the AppleTV have problems only on wireless?

It's hard to say for sure, but I'm guessing there was a problem with the network discovery service. Apple uses Bonjour to advertise various network services (iTunes sharing, file sharing, AirPlay support) without the need to manually input configuration data. Unfortunately it can be a bit prickly at times, so if somewhere along the way the "Hey, I'm an Apple TV" message got lost, didn't get sent or received by your iPhone or Mac, it won't show up as an available device.

Unfortunately, the way Bonjour broadcasts the data seems to be a bit temperamental at times. I'm not aware of any real fix, but a restart almost always seems to fix it. If you're on a Mac, you can try restarting the daemon responsible by running the following two commands in Terminal:

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

But that will only fix things if the problem is the Mac not receiving the messages properly - if it's on the Apple TV's end, then restarting that is the best fix.

try stopping any services that uses port 80 of your network. In simple terms disable anti virus firewall, Teamviewer and Skype. Restart the device and try again. This is a common problem. Hope this helps.


How to open time machine progress bar window I know that there is a window where time machine can display its current progress, along with an estimate about how long it will likely take till the current backup is complete. This window did somehow appear during my initial backup. However, I currently can't find a way to manually open that window for a subsequent backup. Yes there is the Time Machine tab in the Control Panel, but that will not provide an estimation of remanining time. Neither does the context menu of the menu bar icon. So how can I get that window?

I am 100% sure there is no way to see how long the the backup takes just the size of the backup and how much portion of the size it has already backed up like shown below.

The only time duration that Time Machine shows is when you are restoring from a backup and during the first time you set up Time Machine using a empty hard disk.

I just noticed that "Open Time Machine Preferences" shows a progress bar for the current backup operation. I just upgraded to Maverick recently so this may be a new feature.

Note that in Time Machine preferences a progress-bar will only shown when automatic backup runs, not when backup is started manually.


Easily disable/enable all network connectivity My work involves trying stuff online and offline, on a Mac. Sometimes a try can be less than 10 seconds of needed offline time. Most of the time I still need to be online.

Instead of going to Network -> Ethernet/Wifi and disable everything manually, I'd like to know if there is a way to disable it all at once, and re-enable it just as easily.

I've also simply removed the ethernet cable for a while but that's just ridiculously annoying. Since I'm working on a Mac Mini, that also forces me to have it's back facing me for easier reach, and all cables lying just under my screen/behind my keyboard. While that is an "okay" option, I'd like to get rid of it.

I'm thinking maybe there is an App that could be on the top bar and I'd just tap On/Off.

I already use the NetworkConditioner which is amazing for simulating lag, but the only "offline" I can get here is just "100% packet loss" which isn't really offline, it's just infinite lag.

If you have an easy on/off switch (ideally on the top bar so I don't have to Alt-Tab between apps) or something similar to airplane mode, I'm all ears !

Damnit. I searched for a while but without using the keywords "airplane mode osx" which only came to me when I edited my question here.
Research using these words led to a very useful answer available here :
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20130325002258846

If you go to the Network pane of System Preferences, you'll see a
Location popup menu at the top of the window. Click on that menu and
choose Edit Locations. Click on the + icon to add a new location, then
enter a name, such as AirplaneMode. Click on Done.
Next, choose that location in the Location menu, and click on each
available network interface in the list at the left of the window.
Click on the Configure iPv4 menu, and choose Off. For Wi-Fi, just
click on the Turn Wi-Fi Off button. Click Apply, and this location
will block all network activity.
To activate the location, there are two ways. You can click on the
Apple menu, then Location, and choose the location. Or, if you wish to
do this from the command line, as the poster had requested, you can
run this command:
networksetup -switchtolocation AirplaneMode
Replace AirplaneMode with the name you've chosen for the location.

Note : If you've never used the Locations, it won't appear in the Apple menu ; it will appear the first time you make a switch, either using the command line or the Locations menu from the network pane in the settings.
Also, making this process easier could be done by adding two terminal files that execute each command separetely. That can be found here
Here is a summary of the steps found behind that link :

Create a simple shell script, like your example I've made a Hello
World application:
#!/bin/bash
networksetup -switchtolocation AirplaneMode

Save this file as HelloWorld.command. Give this file permission to be executed. chmod u+x HelloWorld.command should do that.

Open the directory where you saved this file in Finder.

Double click on the HelloWorld.command file.

Now all I need is a way to hit those shortcuts from the menu bar and I'm golden. I'll edit here if I find it, but I think I might have to develop it myself.

why not just remove the Ethernet cable and only connect via WiFi which is so easy, just turn Airport off when you don't want to be connected from the menu bar. Sorted


How to use the Homebrew installed git on Mac? I have installed the newest version of git (1.8.3) using homebrew but when I type

git --version

in my terminal, it prints:

git version 1.7.10.2 (Apple Git-33)

What should I do to replace the old version of git with the new one?

Thanks everyone for helpful answers. In my case adding

export PATH="/usr/local/bin:${PATH}"

in ~/.bash_profile followed by

source ~/.bash_profile

solved the problem for my user.

It depends on where your git comes from.  Xcode brings a version for example, maybe that is upfront in your path.

Maybe typing

which git

will show where the old one is.


Textedit file missing, How to recover? I have been working on my scenario for a week on textedit, and this morning while I was making correction my file disappeared, while the other textedit files that were open remained on-screen.

I can't find the file anymore. I have tried the library autosave and there was nothing. When I looked in /private/var/folders there are files that correspond to the time this error happened, but they are forbidden from access.

How can I get my textedit file back?

If it's not in Open Recent under the File menu, it's gone.


Command-line arguments for "Remote Desktop Connection for Mac"? I haven't been able to find any documentation that would indicate this is possible, but is there any way to pass the hostname you'd like to connect to as a command-line argument to Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection for Mac?

Some background info for those interested:

I'm a systems administrator, and I'm in the process of moving to a MacBook Air as my primary work computer from a Windows 7 laptop. I frequently use Remote Desktop Client to connect to servers, and in Windows, I use Launchy as my keyboard launcher. I've assigned "rdp" as a keyword so when I invoke Launchy, type "rdp {tab} servername" it passes the text after the tab key as the hostname to mstsc.exe (i.e., mstsc.exe /v:servername). This results in the remote desktop client opening a session to the hostname specified.

There is no command line access for the Microsoft Remote Desktop Client. But the free and most excellent CoRD remote desktop client does handle rdp:// links which would let you call it from a launcher of your choice or even via open on the command line.

The CoRD documentation on github lays out how you can use URL encoded parameters to open full-configured RDP sessions.

rdp:// URL syntax

CoRD handles rdp:// URLs, which you can use from many places inside OS X. Unfortunately, there is no way to extend Finder's "Connect to Server" dialog, which supports launching VNC URLs, so we can't launch CoRD from there. If Apple changes this (or if anybody is aware of a way to extend it) we would love to hear about it.

  Saved Servers

  If you want to use rdp:// urls with existing saved servers, you can (as of 0.5.3)! Just use the label in place of a hostname:

  open rdp://label

  New Servers

  From a shell (using Terminal):

  open rdp://hostname

  Additional parameters can be used to start a fully-configured session via the URL:

  open rdp://[username[:password]@]hostname[:port][/domain][?parameters]

  The following parameters can be set for the session via a query string (as of 0.5.2):

  screenDepth ### [8|16|24|32]
  screenWidth <width in pixels>
  screenHeight <height in pixels>
  consoleSession ### [true|false|yes|no]
  fullscreen ### [true|false|yes|no]
  windowDrags ### [true|false|yes|no]
  drawDesktop ### [true|false|yes|no]
  windowAnimation ### [true|false|yes|no]
  themes ### [true|false|yes|no]
  fontSmoothing ### [true|false|yes|no]
  forwardDisks ### [true|false|yes|no]
  forwardPrinters ### [true|false|yes|no]
  forwardAudio ### [0|1|2]

  0 - Forward Audio to the Local Machine (Currently not used since CoRD doesn't present audio)
  1 - Leave Audio at the Remote Machine
  2 - Disable Audio at both  Machines

  Example

  open rdp://jsmith:securePassword@hostname.bigco.com/BigCoDomain?screendepth###24\&consoleSession###true\&themes###false\&screenWidth###1280\&screenHeight###800

  Note:

  When using ampersands (&) from the command line, they have to be escaped with a backslash (). Colons (:) can be used in place of ampersands for the same effect, without needing to be escaped.

  Passwords with any special characters in them, @, :, &, etc need to be encoded according to the URL Encoding Format

  Command Line Use

  CoRD supports the following command line options: -host -port -u -d -p -a [8|16|24|32] set screen depth -width set screen resolution width -height set screen resolution height

  Example

  /Applications/CoRD.app/Contents/MacOS/CoRD -host example.com -port 3389 -u username

  Caveats

  Launching CoRD from the command line this way causes a fresh instance of CoRD to be opened. One symptom of this is multiple Dock icons. This overrides or decreases the effectiveness of many of CoRD strong points, including unified sessions, etc. For that reason, we recommend using the open command, and rdp:// URLs to launch sessions.

I think it would be just as easy to make a template for each server you want to connect to, as well as one with an empty server field for those "once in a lifetime" connections.
I just pop them in a folder and either name or number them to get the order right.  Drag the folder to the dock and I have a spot I can click to get a quick list of the rdp templates which I can then just single-click to connect.
Or I can Command+Space and type in the name of the file and press enter to run it.
OR YOU CAN TYPEY TYPEY TYPEY TYPE and install all kinds of management apps.


Mac OS X Lion Terminal I have a question about my terminal. When I started out working with Rails on my Mac terminal, I would have lines that looked like this as the route for my $:

Nicholass-MacBook-Pro:sample_app nbkincaid$ rails console

But now, I get lines that look like this:

pal-nat184-103-166:desktop nbkincaid$

I'm pretty sure that I didn't change anything, so why does it give me the pal-nat....$ instead of the Nicholas...$?

The string "pal-nat184-103-166" is your computer's hostname, which can be changed dynamically by routers or other network devices through DHCP.

If you want to set it to a static string, you can do so by adding the following line to /etc/hostconfig

HOSTNAME=Nicholass-MacBook-Pro

You probably messed up your ~/.bash_profile file.

Export the S1 shell variable.

For example, I have this one:

export PS1='[\u@\h \W$(__git_ps1 " (%s)")]\$ '

Remember to re-open the console after changing bash_profile file.

https://makandracards.com/makandra/1090-customize-your-bash-prompt


Office 2011(mavericks). Attachments from outlook only open word & excel as read only Whenever I receive an email in Outlook that has either a word doc or excel attachment it only allows them to be opened as "read only" documents.  How can I have them open as regular documents as they did with Entourage 2008?  Thanks.

This is a feature of Office 2011 Outlook.  The behaviour is not limited to Mavericks or Word or Excel files.

When you double click an attachment to open it, a copy is saved under your Library folder (in ~/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/Outlook Temp).  This folder is not generally visible or intended to be accessible to users hence the "Read Only" attribute of the file.

You can either

double-click the attachment in Outlook (to Open it in its default application) and then Save As... to, for example, your Documents folder before editing or
right-click and Save As... in Outlook itself, in which case the file will not be "read only".

You can't. They did it on purpose so you don't accidentally ruin the original.


Why do Application Shortcuts in System Preferences disappear? I have a longstanding issue with Application Shortcuts (ie. in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Application Shortcuts). I can set up a new shortcut to a menu item of a specific application, eg. VoodooPad, and it shows up as expected, like so:

This works correctly in the application.

But every such shortcut I have ever set up later disappears -- I'm not sure exactly when, but at some point the prefs pane reverts to the defaults (ie. just one entry for 'Show Help Menu', and the newly-added shortcut no longer works.

Anyone have any idea why?

it sounds like someone has deleted your shortcuts or hit a restore defaults button.

I recommend that you

setup time machine to save your preferences each hour. then you can use it to restore your preferences. that should help you identify the problem.
setup a shortcut that you will use daily (maybe ⌥, to pull up system preferences)

hope that helps
regards


How to modify the command line text showing in Mac terminal My Macbook Pro shows a wired string ("ryoitasuou") at terminal like below picture.
Does any know how to remove or modify it ?
I already deleted the "ryoitasuou" folder in /Users folder , and modify username in "bash_profile" , but these steps does not help.
p.s. I bought this Macbook Pro 2019 from Amazon , and the wired name is already exist after I finished user setup at the first time I boot up this laptop.
This is really annoying every time I use Terminal.

Bash performs a lookup in /etc/passwd, well on macOS it looks in opendirectory, for the users HOME folder at every invocation. Try the following-
 dscl . -read /Users/$(id -un) NFSHomeDirectory RecordName

You will need to change the NFSHomeDirectory value and more than likely the RecordName in opendirectory.


Adjust delay for activating Full Screen Mode toolbar Is it possible to change the delay on the full screen mode window toolbar in OS X Yosemite?

I'm thinking of something like this, but for the toolbar

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 5

I love using full screen mode, but I'm frequently accidentally triggering the toolbar which covers up whatever I'm trying to access at the top of the screen.

Try
defaults write -g NSWindowResizeTime -float 0.001

or
defaults delete -g NSWindowResizeTime

to revert it.  Taken from http://www.defaults-write.com/disable-full-screen-animation-of-os-x/.


Boot Camp ‘bootable USB drive could not be created’ and ‘EFI system partition formatted as NTFS’ I did a fresh macOS install and wanted to install Windows 10 back but Boot Camp is asking for a USB drive. High Sierra wasn't asking for it as a Windows 10 ISO file was enough. Even if I try to install with a FAT formatted USB drive, I still can not install. I have a default Fusion disk which came with iMac but I’m not using it. I installed a 500 GB SSD.

Video: https://youtu.be/aVuB6MHjnzk

Trying without USB connected. I wasn't asked for a USB when I was on High Sierra on the same computer. I want to install to 500 GB SSD (macOS container):

Trying with a FAT formatted USB disk:

Also tried the way without Boot Camp as described here but with no luck: https://fgimian.github.io/blog/2016/03/12/installing-windows-10-on-a-mac-without-bootcamp/

  Windows detected the EFI system partition was formatted as NTFS. Format the EFI system partition as FAT32, and restart the installation. (Screenshot)

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         499.9 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +499.9 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume macos                   41.5 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 44.3 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                517.0 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk1s4

/dev/disk2 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         28.0 GB    disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS apple ssd               27.6 GB    disk2s2

/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *30.8 GB    disk3
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 WININSTALL              30.8 GB    disk3s1

I had the same problem. I formatted the disk manually using disk utility to ms-dos first, restarted the bootcamp assistant and it worked.

I found this support article from Apple's support site helpful in resolving a similar problem.


How to order and merge many .ts files? I have many small files (about 500). They are in right order. I would like to merge them.
Linux commands are also welcome because I can compile them in my OS X.
The command cat *.ts > masi.ts does not work well. The result stops at some points. I am investigating why this occurs.
Some parts of the videos are not in order.

Names of parts of videos where each file has a prefix HRmasi453-27012016.mp4.ts

1.ts
2.ts
...
100.ts
101.ts
...
200.ts
...
300.ts

so the filename is HRmasi453-27012016.mp4-01.ts ... HRmasi453-27012016.mp4-300.ts.
The command cat *.ts > masi.ts does not organise the video in the sequential order.
I think I should make a list before of all items in order.
Then, merge.

Pseudocode

Make a list of videos in order
Merge cat items in list

Do something like filename = prefix + itemInList without creating a new list in the while loop.
cat filename >> result.ts

How can you join the many video files, .ts, files?

I need to preface this by saying having not worked with .ts files I do not know whether or not they can be simply concatenated using cat and as you saw because the are numerically named they get mixed up when using cat *.ts > masi.ts because it sorts lexicographically, so using a ordered list is in order.  With that in mind, here is what I did to create a list of 500 numerically named .ts files and then concatenate them using the list.

I first created 500 numerically named .ts files containing the number of the .ts filename as a control.  I used for i in {1..500}; do echo $i > $i.ts; done  These weren't actually valid .ts files however it allowed me to have 500 files to work with and then see that they were concatenated in proper order when opening the combined.ts file to see an ordered numerical list within the file.

Since you already have the 500 .ts files, in Terminal do the following:

cd ts_files_directory
echo {1..500}.ts | tr " " "\n" > tslist
while read line; do cat $line >> combined.ts; done < tslist

Updated to include actual filename per your comment to my answer and your updated question.

The following assumes that the only numbers in itemInList with a leading 0 (zero)  are e.g., 01...09 and that you change 500 in the {100..500} portion  of the command to the actual count.

Change directory to that of which contains the .ts files.

cd ts_files_directory

The following two commands create the tslist file which is a numerically ordered list of the target filenames to be used with cat in order to avoid the lexicographical sorting issue.

echo 'HRmasi453-27012016.mp4-'{01..99}.ts | tr " " "\n" > tslist
echo 'HRmasi453-27012016.mp4-'{100..500}.ts | tr " " "\n" >> tslist

With the numerically ordered list created, use the following command line to concatenate based on the contents of the tslist file.

while read line; do cat $line >> combined.ts; done < tslist


"Unable to Download"/"Unable to Install" on iOS app update Whenever I try to update one of my apps, it downloads 79%, stops for a moment, then the progress bar resets and one of two dialog boxes appears:

  Unable to Download Item

  "App Name" cannot be downloaded. Please try again later.

  [Done]

or

  Unable to Download Application

  "App Name" could not be installed at this time.

  [Done] [Retry]

In the case of error #1, the app then returns to normal, but has not been updated. In the case of error #2, it sits at 0% and cannot be opened. Retrying simply repeats.

This does not happen with every app. Some apps simply install as expected.

I have a 4th generation iPod touch running the Evasi0n jailbreak of iOS 6.1. Rebooting does not resolve the problem, nor does launching in Safe Mode.

When this happens to me, I find it starts because a download was interrupted.

To correct, I find it easiest to use my computer to install the update, which corrects each app it updates.

I had this problem in the past when my iPhone 4 was jailbroken as well.

I believe that it has something to do with the apple ID used to download the app. Try logging out of the apple ID (within the App Store, usually found at the bottom of the featured apps list), hard restart your device (holding down both sleep and home until device turns off), and sign back in to your ID in the App Store.

Test drive it at that point by installing (or updating) a few apps.

Let me know if this worked. Good luck to ya.


Remove Ubuntu and grow Mac partition I'm new to the whole Mac world, and the first thing I did when I got my MacBook Air 2015 was I installed Ubuntu, but have regretted it now and want to remove it and get my space back into the Mac partition.

I have tried to do it with Disk Utility in OS X, but it just fails and it's not giving any real error code. So I don't know how I can do it?

This is how my partitions looks:

Update

From Recovery Mode:

-bash-3.2# sw_vers
ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.10.5
BuildVersion:   14F27

Booted to Internet Recovery Mode you have to remove all non-OS X partitions, modify the partition types of your macOS partitions (but keep their sizes!) and then resize your main volume. The reason why you can't boot your Mac is the bogus partition type (FFFF-FFF....) of your main partition (i=2/sda2). Additionally the Recovery HD partition (i=3/sda3) has the wrong type.

Preparation:

Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.

The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot into a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an Apple/Akamai server.

I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (preferably Yosemite or El Capitan) or a thumb drive containing a full system (preferably Yosemite or El Capitan). If you boot to a full system and login as admin you have to prepend sudo to execute some commands like gpt ... or newfs_hfs ...!

Remove the Linux Swap and main partition

Open in the menubar Utlities->Terminal
Enter diskutil list and gpt -r show /dev/disk0 to get an overview
Remove the Linux partitions:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 4 /dev/disk0
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 5 /dev/disk0

Modify the OS X partitions (LVG)

Your main partition may either have the type 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC (CoreStorage) or 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC (classical OS X partition). Usually SSD and filevaulted partitions use CoreStorage meanwhile.

First try the CoreStorage type

gpt remove -i 3 /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s 118430560 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0
diskutil cs list

Check if you have a CoreStorage LVG. If not, continue with Modify the OS X partitions (Standard). If you have found an LVG, continue with:

diskutil list
diskutil umountDisk /dev/diskX #check for a disk identifier of a volume with the size ~60 GB and replace X with the number of that disk (it may be 2, 3 or ~13)
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 118840200 -i 3 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0
diskutil verifyDisk /dev/disk0
diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk0s2

Resize OS X partition

Enter diskutil list and gpt -r show /dev/disk0 again. If you have a CoreStorage LVG your partition listing and the partition map should look like this now:

diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                          60.6 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1 Base OS X System
....
/dev/disk2 #this may also have another disk identifier like disk13 or disk3
 #:                       TYPE NAME                      SIZE       IDENTIFIER
 0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD               60.0 GB    disk2
/dev/disk3-disk12 or 13 a lot of small sized disks (512 kb - 8 MB) which are part of the Recovery System

gpt -r show disk0
     start        size  index  contents
         0           1         PMBR
         1           1         Pri GPT header
         2          32         Pri GPT table
        34           6
        40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    409640   118430560      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
 118840200     1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
 120109736   116868407
 236978143          32         Sec GPT table
 236978175           1         Sec GPT header

Now enter diskutil cs list

You should get a list with 4 UUIDs of the various items of the CoreStorage LVG.
Resize the whole stack to the full size:

diskutil cs resizeStack lvUUID 0g

with lvUUID: UUID of the Logical Volume. It's the last one listed and looks similar to this: 9A7B21AA-F9FE-4E65-8C7E-ED2A73744C15. 0g is a magical size which expands an LV and the superior LVG to the max available size

In your case it's the one starting with 10F16... so your final command is

diskutil cs resizeStack 10F16........ 0g

If your main volume is encrypted you have to unlock it first and enter the  password of your user on the main volume or another proper passphrase.

diskutil cs unlockVolume lvUUID

In your case it's the one starting with 10F16... so your final command is

diskutil cs unlockVolume 10F16........

After successfully expanding your Logical Volume quit Terminal by entering exit and cmdQ and reboot to your main volume.

Modify the OS X partitions (Standard)

remove the CoreStorage partition and re-add it as standard partition:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s 118430560 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 118840200 -i 3 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0
diskutil verifyDisk /dev/disk0
diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk0s2

Expand the main partition disk0s2 with the common tools (Disk Utility or diskutil)

with just updating the version of osx , u can grow the partition size.... for this delete the ubuntu partition(which then cant be merged with the existing macintosh partition) and then update the version of osx followed by merging.. this time it will merge,,


Flashing folder with question mark, spinning beachball when wakes up My MacBook is acting weird recently. It starts to show flashing folder with question mark during bootup and spinning beach ball when it wakes up from a long sleep. When these happens, I will have to power it down, then it works perfectly again. They occurs quite frequent, about once in every 5 bootup/wakes up.

Running Lion 10.7.4, and I just replaced the HDD with a SSD 2-3 months ago. The problem starts to occur about a month ago.

I suspect it has something to do with the SSD, but I can't really pinpoint the exact problem. I'd already reselect the startup disc multiple times in system preferences.

Any ideas? Thanks.

Update: OWC just came back to me, telling me it's probably due to SATA incompatibility and is offering me a refund. The refund is 50 dollars less than the purchase price (current value price, he said) and I am responsible for the shipping cost. I am considering if I should just keep it, as I am not located in the states and shipping back is really an hassle, plus the cost.

The Folder with a question mark on boot indicates that it could not find a bootable partition. There is something flaking with your drive, get it diagnosed, repaired, or replaced, ASAP.

The folder with a question mark means the built in program the you cannot delete could not find a operating system on your drive.

You should make sure the the hard drive is properly installed in the computer and you might wanna run the Disk Repair utility on it to make sure that it is not a problem with the operating system.


How to find cause of high kernel_task cpu usage? Occasionally my machine will have a kernel_task instance max out the CPU:

This can last from minutes to sometimes hours. The machine is effectively unusable in this state. Restarting doesn't help; a new kernel_task pops up again until it finishes whatever it's doing.

How can I find out what this process is doing?

TLDR; If your MacBook Pro runs hot or shows a high % CPU for the kernel task, try charging on the right and not on the left.

High kernel_task CPU Usage is due to high chassis temperature caused by charging. In particular Left Thunderbolt port usage.
Solutions include:

Move charging from the left to the right side. If you have a second charger then plug it in on the right side. Avoid plugging everything on the right side (see last paragraph below).
Unplug something from the left side. Either power or another accessory until the battery is full.
Force fans to max before plugging in. iStatMenus has an easy Sensors -> Fans menu item to do so. This only helps in marginal conditions.
Move to a cooler room.

Proof:
Actual CPU temperature or application CPU usage is uncorrelated with kernel_task. A hot CPU is throttled by reducing its clock speed, not by scheduling fake no-op load.
The graphs below are from iStatMenus. The machine had been used on battery then plugged in.
State A a USB-C hub (a mouse and keyboard, plus power) and a USB-C HDMI 2.0 adapter, both on the left side. You can see the Thunderbolt Left Proximity temperature sensor rise quickly. About 3-4 minutes later the dreaded kernel_task high CPU usage starts.
State B cures the kernel_task problem by moving power from the left ports to the right. The left side temperature drops and the kernel_task goes away within about 15 seconds.
This is causal. Moving power back to the left side, restoring State A, quickly restores the temperatures and kernel_task again comes back after 3-4 minutes. Again moving power back to the right side, restoring State B, resolves the problem immediately.
State C shows that simply having stuff plugged in to TB ports raises their temperature significantly. Both the hub (mouse and keyboard ONLY) and HDMI adapter individually raise the temperature about 10 degrees, and 15 degrees together.

(all other temperatures were both low and flat. Under 55 degrees.)
Note that high temperature on the right side appears to be ignored by the OS. Plugging everything into the two right ports instead of the left raised the Right temperatures to over 100 degrees, without the fans coming on. No kernel_task either, but the machine becomes unusable from something throttling.
Ergo, high CPU usage by kernel_task is caused by high Thunderbolt Left Proximity temperature, which is caused by charging and having normal peripherals plugged in at the same time.
2017 15" Macbook Pro, MacOS 10.14.5

To actually answer the question:

How can I find out what this process is doing?

The only way to actually ask the kernel what it's doing is to attach a kernel debugger. That means getting a debug kernel from Apple, rebooting, then using a second Mac to attach to the debugged machine. You can then examine stack traces and guess what they mean.
Otherwise guessing and testing is the only way. Of course that leads to false conclusions more often than not.

First measure the temperature around the Mac and then see if cooler air reduces this.

Why is kernel_task using so much CPU?
What exactly does kernel_task do?

In your case, Skype and Firefox are getting all the cycles left over due to running hot. Windowserver and kernel just do the bidding of the other programs. Also, for a longer term view of what the CPU is doing, watch the energy tab in activity monitor.
By closing the apps that take CPU, you can “let the system run cool”.  Running like this won’t hurt things, just there are thermal limits so more efficient apps or less demanding tabs / video / content lets you get more work done before the system protects itself.
Also on Catalina, you can see actual GPU usage in Activity Monitor and test changes to browser settings if you think GPU is putting the machine into thermal throttling states.


Why is my iOS not detecting Bluetooth device names? I am trying to list of bluetooth devices from my app.

My Bluetooth is enabled in settings but doesn't detect device names.

The BT device that you are looking for has to be in discovery mode, or set to always discoverable in order to be visible to such device searches.

you can use apps like lightBlue or BLE scanner


macbook air early 2008 (original) 13inch: 45 W magsafe charger here
Apple has two slightly different adapters called magsafe L 45W: the first one is recommended for my model, but then on the store they only sell the 2nd one: will this be fully compatible with my laptop?

where (besides amazon) will it be possible to buy just the cord that goes from charger to laptop?

Technically, any Magsafe 1 charger will work. With that said, due to the unique shape of the original MacBook Air, it won't rest flat unless you use the charger that can with it. So you actually don't want any of the chargers shown on that page, you want one like this. Notice the different angle on the charger head. With that said, since Apple doesn't sell official ones any more, be very careful to make sure that you get an authentic one: knock-offs can actually destroy your computer.

To my knowledge, there's no Magsafe 2 to Magsafe 1 adapter (someone else showed a Magsafe 1 to Magsafe 2 adapter which will do nothing for you.) Even if there was, there's no good reason to get one unless you already have Magsafe 1 chargers and then buy a new MacBook with Magsafe 2.

The two original magsafe (4-pin) connectors will fit any Magsafe 1; that is, the straight white connector (left), and the L-shaped stainless steel (right).

I'm assuming they changed the design for two reasons, one, the white ones didn't match the newer stainless steel design, and two, it sticks out more than the L-shaped version.

Magsafe2 uses a 5-pin connector.  You can buy a converter that will adapt 1 -> 2.


Installing Windows 10 on Early 2011 MacBook Pro (VirtualBox method) Apologies if the etiquette of posting is incorrect, I'm brand new to the site despite lurking for years and couldn't seem to comment on the guide I mention below.

I've been trying to set up Win10 on my Early 2011 MBP, using various methods and receiving even more error messages/setbacks.

As an intro to the problem, I'm trying to use a method that doesn't involve using my internal Superdrive as I've discovered it's seemingly broken over the years and so it's unusable. Now this causes me Legacy/EFI problems I'm learning, to install via USB that is, even after fixing my MBR/GPT partition tables Windows will cancel after the install. I've tried to bypass by following this guide: No bootable device USB 2.0 MacBook Pro mid 2014

I've tried the above guide multiple times and have come across varying factors in the guide.

The most common one I'm facing (and my current problem), is when it comes to listing the volumes in diskpart - the FAT32 32GB partition titled BOOTCAMP I've set aside for Windows isn't listed in the volumes. This isn't always the case, sometimes it's shown - sometimes it isn't.

The only variable I can think of as to why it now won't show is because I've switched Windows 10 ISOs.

The reason I did this is because yesterday the install process probably went the furthest it did. All the files managed to xcopy to the virtual drive, then back onto the C drive - and even showed in the Mac boot screen (which occasionally doesn't happen) - but upon loading the screen instantly went blue and said there was a problem with my boot files and Windows needed to repair.

So I downloaded the newest .ISO from Microsoft yesterday. But now, as a result, the BOOTCAMP partition I've set aside never seems to show up in diskpart.

This has probably been the bane of my existence for the past 2-3 days - so any help is massively appreciated. Thanks.

Just format the Bootcamp drive as "mac journaled extended" and then start the Windows installing process
When the "select volume" window appears, delete the Bootcamp volume and create it again.
Done.


PPTP VPN client for macOS Sierra or iOS 10? Apple has removed PPTP VPN support in Sierra due to security concerns. See: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206844

Unfortunately, I need to connect to an organisation that only supports PPTP (not my decision).

I know about Shimo, but it's $50 and has a lot of features I don't need.

I was hoping to find a free or open source solution? A command-line-only option would be fine for macOS.

I'm even open to more esoteric solutions (e.g. a lightweight linux VM that connects to the VPN, and then shares the connection with host OS, but not sure how feasible this would be or how to do it).

Edit: I see the command-line tool pppd is still present in macOS Sierra, so perhaps it's possible to call this directly?

Edit 2: I tried following this tutorial with an options file from the ArchWiki, and a custom route in /etc/ppp/ip-up, but it gives an error (publish_entry SCDSet() failed: Success!) when I try to run the pppd command, the pppd daemon doesn't seem to be running, and the ppp0 interface isn't showing up in ifconfig. I don't know much about networks and network interfaces, so I'm finding this very confusing! Any help would be much appreciated.

The FlowVPN client is free (and works with any provider).

It supports PPTP and OpenVPN on macOS Sierra and High Sierra:

https://www.flowvpn.com/download-mac/

Just overwrite the FlowVPN server address with any server and it connects.

VPN Tracker also supports PPTP it's not free but presumed to be the most professional VPN Software for the Mac. PPTP connections are automatically imported into VPN Tracker if launched on El Capitan prior to the upgrade and if the connection fails, there is a professional support team. Yes it's a paid product.


Random contacts on my iPhone 5 I recently bought a new iPhone 5. When I was going through my contacts today, I noticed a lot of email adresses stored along with the other numbers. I didn't even know most of them! What has happened?

This is likely because iOS 6 has Facebook and Twitter contact import. So, if you logged into your Facebook account on your iPhone, it will automatically go through your contacts and pull in information that it finds in their Facebook account.

Also, if you check to see your mail account setting on the phone that may be enabled. We have seen where exchange mail account is adding random emails in our employees phones.


VMWare Fusion: Could not open /dev/vmmon error After updating to Yosemite the only trouble I have is that VMWare Fusion (Professional Version 5.0.5 if that helps) fails to start showing following error:

  Could not open /dev/vmmon: No such file or directory.
  Please make surethat the kernel module `vmmon' is loaded.

I've tried to google the issue but the only relevant thing found was this:

  The Mac has a certain amount of devices it can register in the /dev/ directory ...,  virtual devices like virtualization software and VPN clients also create devices in this directory quickly filling up the number to the limit. To solve this I went through my installed applications and removed every VPN client and VM software that I don’t require any longer and rebooted my machine. After the reboot everything worked immediately.

But even if this is true, I just can not get rid of my VPN client for example. So, I still have no idea what steps I should take to solve the issue. I'll be very much obliged for any hint how to fix this problem.

After having this issue with macOS High Sierra and VMWare Fusion 8.5.8, I was able to resolve it by allowing the system extension as described in http://planetvm.net/blog/?p=3240

In short; open System Preferences, click Security & Privacy, and from the General tab you should see a message stating System software from developer "VMware, Inc." was blocked from loading. Clicking the Allow button resolved the issue for me.


Reset my Macs password? I still have SSH access I recently changed my password and promptly forgot it :P What is the best option for resetting it? I can still access the mac via SSH (ssh key auth method), can I do anything with that?

No - the typical ways to reset a password or delete the file that lets the Mac reboot to the setup assistant where it lets you create a new admin user that will have a known password all require you to know a working user/password combination that works for sudo.

You'll want to boot to the Recovery HD or install media or into single user mode to make a new admin user (which can be deleted once you've reset your password) or use the normal OSX procedure to reset your password.

If you are an administrative user (or can login as one on the shell prompt), you should be able to use sudo passwd USER to change the password.


Mirror iPad 2 display to Mac WITHOUT Airplay I'd like to mirror my iPad 2 display to my Mac running OSX 10.6 WITHOUT using AirPlay, because the app I'm running on my iPad won't show the content using AirPlay or using the traditional output at the bottom (like running a cable from there to HDMI on my TV).

How can I accomplish this? Are there any app combinations that let you simply mirror the iPad display to the Mac over wi-fi without using AirPlay?

Sadly there is no way to mirror your iPad to your Mac without jail breaking it and installing DisplayOut and getting some cable. There is just no way for the Mac to know what is on the iPad without something on the iPad and on the Mac that syncs with eachother.

I use Airserver to mirror my iPad on my Mac. It's been flawless for me. Very simple to set up


Phone calls from sons phone showing up on my phone How do I stop my sons phone calls from showing up on my phone?

You may create a different Apple ID for your son (or for you), or disable iPhone Cellular Calls. Go to Settings > FaceTime and turn them off.

You can use Family Sharing –as suggested– to share purchased apps and media, among other things.

You should look into Settings-Phone-and disable Calls on Other Devices.
That may work for you.


What do you call the OSX Window Server, Window Manager, and Desktop Environment? In Linux we have three layers that represent the Window Server, Window Manager, and Desktop Environment. All of those three layers have more than one competing technology. I'm confused when talking about Apple products because I don't know what they call the software in their stack. I'm aware that they don't always have competing products and so I would like to know how they arrange their layers and what term I can use to refer to these Linux analogs. What is the Apple term for the technology that represents the

Window Server I assume it's XQuartz? (On Linux we have X11, Xorg, and Wayland)
Desktop Environment I know there is only but what is the right name to reference it? (On Linux we have Gnome, KDE, Xfce, or i3)
Window Manager I assume this is Aqua? (On Linux we have Qt, and Gtk)

I see a lot of terms like Aqua, Quartz, and XQuartz, and "Core Graphics", but I don't understand how they're organized with the traditional layers I am used to?

macOS has implementations of the X11 protocol as you're used to on Linux. This is called XQuartz, it is based on the same Xorg as you'll find on Linux.

You can use many of the same desktop environments on top of macOS and XQuartz as you can on Linux. It is the exact same programs, just recompiled on macOS.

The terms for these things on macOS are the same as on Linux as it is the same technology (i.e. built on the X11 protocol).

Wayland is a different display protocol than X111, and is not currently supported on macOS.

However note that "native macOS apps" do not use the X11 protocol, Xorg or anything like that. Instead they use the native Apple supplied systems.

Here the window server is the process named simply "WindowServer" on a default macOS installation.

The "Desktop Environment" does not have a single counterpart on macOS rather it is a combination of multiple macOS parts - most notably WindowServer, Dock and perhaps Finder.

Regarding the Aqua, Quartz and XQuartz:

Quartz is a 2D text and graphics rendering library. There's also a Quarts GPU accelerated compositor On Linux, the counterpart 2D library is Cairo or similar.
XQuartz is simply an X11 server built on top of the Quartz rendering library.
Aqua is the name of the Apple graphical user interface. It defines the looks of widgets/controls, menus, etc. The counterpart on Linux would be something like GTK and Gnome, or QT and KDE.

The "Desktop Environment" is the application "Finder". I don't know that the window manager has a fancy name?


After update (to 4.2) iOS says I have 723 songs, but iPod.app says "No Content" I have just updated to 4.2, and the space for my music is still taken according to iTunes, and the device "About" screen says I have 723 songs, but I cannot see it in the iPod app. I assume that another sync is required to activate the content again or something to that effect?

iTunes can see the content on my phone and even allow me to play it. I will attach some images to illustrate the issue. My photo library was updated and seems to work. I have also tried closing all apps, which did not help.

I am speculating, that this is what happened: I did the update on another computer (not the one my music is synced to), which invalidated the copy protection of my music library, so when I plugged my phone back into the machine where my music library is stored it did the deed for me. That is what seems to have happened anyway.

Re-start touch (Hold home and off/on buttons) and sync again with iTunes, bingo!


Is there a way to unlock to Home screen without swiping up? In short, I would like my iPhone X to go to the Home screen (first page of apps) immediately after Face ID unlocks my phone, without having to swipe up from the Notifications screen.

It's not possible without any touch, but you can make it just a touch instead of a swipe by creating an Assistive Touch gesture for swiping up, then triggering this gesture instead of swiping.


How do I work with (minimize/resize/un-float) a captive portal? Captive portals are those screen that float over everything while you're being logged into some network with terms of service (like a coffee shop or airport).

The one I encounter regularly takes almost a minute to connect after I "agree."

These "captive-portals" feel like they were built for a dystopian future...

How can I make these windows minimizable or move them out of my field of vision so I can use my screen for other things while I await a viable network connection?

Because of System Integrity Protection (SIP), a feature introduced in El Capitan to protect system files from modification by malware, you can’t just move the file if you have that feature enabled (it’s on by default).

So, first, you have to disable SIP on this case

Follow these steps to disable SIP:

Restart your Mac.
Before OS X starts up, hold down Command-R and keep it held down until you see an Apple icon and a progress bar. Release. This boots you into Recovery.
From the Utilities menu, select Terminal.
At the prompt type exactly the following and then press Return: csrutil disable
The terminal should display a message that SIP was disabled.
From the Apple menu, select Restart.

After this,

In the Finder, select Go > Go To Folder.
Enter /System/Library/CoreServices and hit return.
Find Captive Network Assistant, click it, and rename it with an extra word, like Captive Network Assistant Do Not Launch and press return.
Enter your password when prompted to make the change.

After this again, enable SIP, following the first process shared on this comment just by typing csrutil enanble


Screenshot to OCR on OS X? I want to be able to take a screenshot on my mac, then send that to an OCR engine and get back the text it has identified.

Are there any existing software tools that do this for OS X?  I have a Windows solution but not one for Mac.

I have used FastScripts to assign a keyboard shortcut to this script:
screencapture -i /tmp/tesseract.png
tesseract /tmp/tesseract.png stdout|tr -d \\f|pbcopy

brew install tesseract installs tesseract. tesseract prints to STDOUT when the output file name is specified as stdout. tesseract adds a form feed character to the end of the output.
Edit: tesseract isn't very accurate, so I now use Google's Cloud Vision API instead:
curl -sH"Authorization:Bearer $(gcloud auth application-default print-access-token)" -HContent-Type:application/json\;charset=utf-8 https://vision.googleapis.com/v1/images:annotate -d@<(printf %s '{"requests":[{"image":{"content":"'"$(base64 path/to/input/file.png)"'"},"features":[{"type":"TEXT_DETECTION"}]}]}')|jq -r '.responses[0].fullTextAnnotation.text'

Demo: https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/drag-and-drop. It even works with Japanese and Chinese text.

Here is a command to do it that easily does it
screencapture -i /tmp/tesseract.png; tesseract -l eng /tmp/tesseract.png /tmp/text\ document; open -R /tmp/text\ document.txt

Download tesseract here
https://formulae.brew.sh/api/formula/tesseract.json


7TV installed itself on AppleTV 4K I just opened my AppleTV 4K and I found an app called 7TV installed!

Any ideas how that could happen?

I never downloaded it.

Location is Germany

On tvOS 10 and later you can enable the feature called "Automatic Downloads" - it sounds like this is what you did.

When "Automatic Downloads" is on, the Apple TV will automatically install apps that you have on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, that are compatible with Apple TV. The key is that the same Apple ID account is added to the Apple TV as you have used on another device.


Stop Image Capture from opening when a new device is connected Ok I get how to disable Image Capture from opening for a specific device, but I'm an iOS developer and I work with a lot of devices. Is there a way to stop this ruddy app from launching the first time I connect any new device? It's a serious invasion of privacy when I connect someone's phone and immediately see their photos plastered on my screen for the world to see!

Actually, the best way is:

Once Image Capture is open, click the device in the list, then:
Bottom left corner of the application, small triangle. There: switch it to "no application".

Done

You could delete Image Capture entirely through the Terminal command

sudo rm -rf /Applications/Image\ Capture.app/


FileVault unlock startup screen I don't want anybody turning on my Mac seeing my name and user account picture (all user account configured on the computer, actually!) just because it defaults to choosing a user to unlock the drive.

How can I get two simple username/password text fields instead of the "personal" login screen? This is possible for a "normal" login screen...

There is no way currently to get login / password blanks at the FileVault 2 preboot login screen.

This is easy to do.

Open System Preferences
Click on "Users & Groups"
At the bottom of the left window pane click on "Login Options"
Change the value of "Display login window as" from "List of users" to "Name and
password"

Now the login screen will show two simple username/password text fields.


Apple TV Black screen (OS X Yosemite ) I have MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014) and also a third generation Apple TV. Lately, especially after 10.10.3 update for OS X Yosemite, I am having mirroring issues.

I have checked all the links, forums etc on google and still no luck.

The problem is basically, my ipad 2/iphone 5 can successfully mirror to Apple TV, but when I try to mirror my MBP, it only shows black screen with audio..

I cannot control the apple tv settings from my menu bar on MBP either. It does not let me choose whether to extend my desktop or mirror built-in display.

On web, I read forums with similar questions but they are generally left unanswered or did not work for me.

Thanks in advance xxx

In cases where something appears to work, but it is not following your commands:

Logging as different user and try again, to check if your profile/permissions needs repairs.
Open Disk Utility located in your utility folder, and use the Repair Permissions.

I was having this same issue. I just restarted my MBP and now AirPlay is working fine.


Why cannot I see any browsers in system preferences? Already filed a bug in Apple's bug reporter, ID is 25949722

What I want to do is to set Canary as default browser, but when I opened system preferences, I cannot see any browsers listed.

What's wrong with my Mac (OS X 10.11.4 - El Capitan)?

It looks like you may need to rebuild the Launch Services database, which is what the Mac uses for its "what apps can open this type of file" structure.

You can either do it in Terminal, using

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user ; killall Dock

then restart,

Or Onyx (freeware) can do it for you - Maintenance tab > Rebuilding - check just the first box & execute.

I deleted the Opera browser and it solved the problem.


Load text messages on new phone My personal phone is iPhone 5.

Boss bought me a new company phone, iPhone 7.  And it syncs with Microsoft Exchange server for email, etc.  Before I got this new phone, I used my old one for work, especially texting.

How can I get the old text messages (and only the text messages) from the 5 onto the new 7?  I do not want to backup/restore because I need to keep the configuration and current settings of the 7.

I think easiest way would be to load a backup on your new phone, but you said that is not possible.
In this article 3rd party software ist used.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/iphone/how-to-transfer-text-messages-from-one-iphone-another-3525410/


Disable screen blur on fast user switching in Yosemite Anyone aware of a way to customize the appearance of the screen during fast user switching? I'd like to disable the background blur to make it look more like it did in Mavericks.

Yes, you can change the blurred background image on the login screen in Yosemite.

In root /Library/Caches (make sure you're not in the user ~/Library) you will find a file called: com.apple.desktop.admin.png. This is the blurred image that was created when you set your Desktop wallpaper.

Replace this file with any image you would like on your login page. Make sure to keep the permissions the same as the original file.

Hat Tip to Bobby T from Apple Support Communities: https://discussions.apple.com/message/26879262#26879262

Cheryl

To disable blurring, please read this tip http://www.mcelhearn.com/yosemite-tip-how-to-turn-off-the-annoying-translucency/


Can Mac OS X Messages support more than one apple id? I have two Apple IDs, one for work and one personal. My iPhone's Messages settings are bound to my work id. When it receives messages, they pop up on my work computer pretty as you please.

I would like that to happen on my home computer too. If I open Messages > Preferences > Accounts on my home computer, I see my home Apple ID listed (along with AIM and Bonjour). I would like to add my work Apple ID as well.

When I click on +, I'm offered Google, Yahoo, Aol, and "other" as my choices. And under "other", the choices are "AIM", "Jabber", and "Yahoo"

I was able to add my work account under Settings > Accounts, but there doesn't seem to be a way to connect that to Messages.

AFAIK, this is not possible. You can add multiple E-Mail addresses to one AppleID (System Preferences -> iCloud -> Account Details -> Contact) , but you cannot use multiple AppleIDs for iMessage on one user account on a Mac.

You can try going to Messages.app's Preferences (Messages > Preferences) from the menu bar.

Within it there should be a tab 'Accounts' for you to connect your work account to iMessage.

If your account appears greyed out, click it and check 'Enable this account'.


Is there possible to export XML from Final Cut Pro without open the Application? Is it possible to export XML from Fincalcut Pro without open the Application?

By XML I mean .fcpxml.

Why? Cause I want to do automate export and process the data programmatically.

I don't think so, but you can automate opening the program, and exporting the XML.


Can a 2009 MacBook Pro use more memory than Apple's 'maximum RAM' figure of 8 GB? I have a 2009 MBP with 8GB of RAM. I run Windows under Parallels pretty much all the time (I use Visual Studio for work). I recently installed an SSD to speed it up a bit and its running beautifully. However I could do with having a few extra gigs available to the Windows VM and was wondering if it would be worth buying 2 x 8GB SIMs to enable this. Apple states that the maxiumum for MBPs is 8GB, but I have seen figures online (possibly at OWC) which would suggest that Apple's specs are just guidelines which can be over-ruled.

Does anyone have any experience of 'overloading' their Macs with RAM? OSX can address terabytes of memory so I thought perhaps it was availability of chips which is the limiting factor ...

Update

These are the specs for my Macbook Pro 5,5

As bmike refers to, YMMV, but...

Yes.  I had a 2008 MBP which has a listed 'maximum' of 4GB even though the slots would accept up to 8GB.  This machine worked wonderfully for a couple of years.  It was replaced though still works.

I am not sure if installing above the supported maximum voids your warranty, but it may be something you want to look into.  I just didn't care when I did it.

You can with out a doubt run 16gb of ram. A classmate and I were discussing this and he made the upgrade and showed me that the laptop recognized everything. I asked him about a year later if it was still running ok and he said he is still using it and has had no issues. I will be making the upgrade myself as one of my 4gb chips died.


How to update Mac OS X 10.6.8 to 10.7 I have Cienega on my Mac and did a recent update.  Since the update I'm not able to open in Applications Cienega.  I'm receiving a error message that says  I have Mac OS X 10.6.8. The application requires Mac OS X 10.7 or later.  How do I upgrade?

Apple has started selling OS X Lion redemption codes,  for £14 (in the UK) so you can still buy the old OS if you need to.

See also: Is It Possible to Still Upgrade to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

Go to the App Store and find OS X Mountain Lion over there. Click download and run it.


Why did my Command + V (to paste) suddenly stop working? Maybe I should be weary every time I do one of these shady Apple updates on my 3-year old Mac running 10.11.5.

Suddenly, the shortcut to paste, ⌘ Command V, stopped working for me. But all other shortcuts using the ⌘ Command key still work, such as Copy, Cut, Find, Minimize, etc. Paste still works if I do it manually with the mouse by going up to Edit and clicking Paste.

Even when I log into another user, same problem.  And when I am in Recovery Mode, same problem.  And I don't think I have any recent add-ons, as far as I can tell.

I restarted several times and reset my Keyboard in System Preferences. I even tried a few random code stuff in Monitor that I found on other forums. Nothing has worked.

I had the same issue in Mac Excel 2011 I am still using.

-Right click on the Paste icon in toolbar, choose Properties...
-Next screen, click Keyboard... on right hand side
-In "Press new shortcut key", add command+v.

That worked, even though command+v was already in list of current keyboard keys for Paste function. Hope this helps

Turn off "Reopen windows when logging in" when restarting.
I have had strange things happen with that terrible thing.


Why do I need an admin password to change the VPN PPP Password in my keychain? It's MY local personal keychain after all. I can edit other passwords, but not the VPN PPP pasword. See screenshot for details.

I think because VPN is a network interface, your basically changing preferences for that (so that´s a global change, not only for your keychain item). So the same way you need to identify as an admin to unlock "System Preferences...">"Network" for being able to change interfaces, you would need to do that here, too.

Because it's YOUR keychain. This prevents someone else from sitting down at your computer and changing your keychain passwords.


Is there a way to cycle between full screen windows on OS X? I have multiple Safari windows in fullscreen mode and I'd like to cycle through them using the keyboard (pretty much like command + ` works when windows are not fullscreen'd). I know I can control + ->/<-, but that will make me pass through all my non Safari windows. Is that even possible?

The short answer is no. OS X, by default, does not have a method which allows you to contextually change between spaces, staying in the current application.

From my experience, your best bet is likely to focus on tabs for your navigation, replacing (or augmenting) spaces. Safari tabs can be switched between with the keyboard using Command+Shift+{ and Command+Shift+}, which would give you functionally the ability to quickly switch between pages, while still not worrying about other applications getting in the way.

I don't have a Mavericks machine to test with but older Mac OSes use CMD+` to cycle through an application's windows. This worked just now on Snow Leopard.


iCloud tabs only shows one iOS device at a time I had an iPhone and a Mac connected to an iCloud account, and I recently got an iPad. However, I noticed that I can't see all my tabs on all my devices.

It seems like iCloud thinks my iPad and iPhone are the same device:

On the Mac, I only see one iOS device at a time. If I used my iPhone last, that's what it'll show. Then if I use my iPad, the tabs list is replaced with my iPad's tabs.
On either iOS device, I can only see the Mac.

So far I have tried:

rebooting
signing in and out of iCloud
changing the names of the devices
restoring the devices from backups

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

This is caused by setting up your iPad from your iPhone’s backup.

In macOS, the file ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.Safari.*.plist holds a key named SyncedTabsDeviceUUID. The value of that string uniquely identifies your browser’s synced iCloud Tabs.

Since I have Safari Technology Preview installed, I have a second file ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.SafariTechnologyPreview.*.plist, with a different SyncedTabsDeviceUUID allowing both Safari and Safari Technology Preview to sync their tabs independently via iCloud.

When you restore a device from backup, that SyncedTabsDeviceUUID gets restored as well, leading to collisions during iCloud Tabs syncing.

If you want to get fancy, you could try backing up your iPad to iTunes, find and edit that file within your iOS backup, then restore it back to your iPad.

Or you could just setup your iPad as new and get a legitimate unique ID for it.

Your best bet is that iCloud can only show one device at a time. What you could try to do, however, is link the two iOS devices together via Bluetooth. That might sync the tabs between the two and list both of their tabs. If not, than iCloud is a one-at-a-time thing.


Is there a way to find the age of a specific Mac? Is there a way to decode the serial-number of your Mac to get more information ?

Few ways found after searching -
1. Mac Tracker
Mactracker provides detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made, including items such as processor speed, memory, optical drives, graphic cards, supported OS versions, and expansion options. Also included is information on Apple mice, keyboards, displays, printers, scanners, speakers, cameras, iPod, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, Wi-Fi products, Newton, iOS, Mac OS, and OS X versions.
http://www.mactracker.ca/
2.Coconut Battery 2.8
It has this nice feature which shows the age of your mac inside the App -
Calculates the age of your Mac using the coded production date in the serial number of your Mac.
http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/

I just downloaded Coconut Battery -- it displays information relating to the Macbook's date of manufacture, and, separately, that of the battery. It's a nice tool; of course, I can't attest to the accuracy of the data presented, but I'm assuming it's pulling the information from somewhere credible. (My Mac itself doesn't seem to provide date of manufacture via the Apple System Information panel.)


How can I reinstall an application that the Mac App Store thinks is installed already? I'm the developer of an application that is currently on the Mac App Store. I'm trying to download my own application so that I can test out the binary that is on the store. (As opposed to running it in Xcode.)

I have purchased my own app in the app store previously, but then deleted it. (So that I could install a different version for testing.) Now, the App Store thinks that the application is still installed, even though it is not. (I deleted the development version when I was finished using it.)

I have removed all instances of the application from:

/Applications
~/Downloads

But the app is marked as "Installed" in the App Store, and it doesn't show up in my purchases. Is there a trick to get my binary re-installed?

Awesome, I figured it out. Run this command, which rebuilds LaunchServices:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

And everything should be back to good! Immediately after running, the App Store allowed me to re-purchase the app.

Source: MacLife Link

You can also hold down option while clicking the app in the app store to force it to re-install.


Compilation error with Mojave: error: ‘_Atomic’ does not name a type After updating to Mojave 10.14.4 and Xcode 10.2, I fail to compile GCC 8.3.0. The error message is

In file included from /usr/include/sys/sysctl.h:83,
                 from ../../gcc-8.3.0/gcc/config/darwin-driver.c:30:
/usr/include/sys/ucred.h:94:2: error: ‘_Atomic’ does not name a type
  _Atomic u_long          cr_ref;  /* reference count */
  ^~~~~~~

I have not found any clue how this can be fixed. The header in question is

struct ucred {
    LIST_ENTRY(ucred)       cr_link; /* never modify this without KAUTH_CRED_HASH_LOCK */
#if defined(__STDC_VERSION__) && __STDC_VERSION__ >= 201112L && !defined(__STDC_NO_ATOMICS__)
    _Atomic u_long          cr_ref;  /* reference count */
#elif defined(__cplusplus) && __cplusplus >= 201103L
    _Atomic u_long          cr_ref;  /* reference count */   // <--- this line
#else
    volatile u_long         cr_ref;  /* reference count */
#endif

Any ideas are highly appreciated!

I encountered the same problem myself. The error is actually reported by g++, a C++ compiler. On MacOS 10.14.4, the header file <sys/ucred.h> uses the _Atomic keyword for C++, although it is only defined in the C standard. (I assume that Apple's compiler clang++ defines this keyword as extension to the C++ standard.)

The proper fix is to tell gcc to "fixinclude" the header file <sys/ucred.h>. This patch does this. This is a patch that needs to be applied to the source code of GCC 8.3.0 before building it.

I had the same issue and I found a solution here.

  macOS Mojave changed the location of the system headers, this broke the GCC 8 build process. In order to build GCC install the required header files in the old location:

The solution is to install the package found in the following directory.

/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/Packages/


How can I find out the size of a video file on my iPhone 6 camera roll? How can I find out the size of a video file on my iPhone 6 camera roll without connecting it to a computer.

The Shortcuts app made this actually rather easy nowadays. Configure it as an extension for the share sheet, then activate it in any video (or photo) within Photos.

PS: Shortcuts is part of recent versions of iOS. For first time users it might help to have a look at the Shortcut Manual.

try to share video on utube and it will show size of video before uploading to utube.
Also you can upload on icloud can also provide you the size of video. sharing it with airdrop also provide you the size of file you are sharing.


Wifi hangs on early 2015 MacBook Pro? It happens regardless of what network I'm connected to. Every hour or so, the internet connection will just load forever. Nothing else changes as far as I can tell, the wifi menu still says "connected" and "internet reachable" but webpages will not load. Reconnecting to the network / turning wifi off and on will always fix it. Early 2015 13" MacBook Pro Retina.

You can try this site http://osxdaily.com/2015/10/16/fix-wi-fi-problems-mac-os-x-el-capitan/  . For me it doesn't work:(.


Is bash in OSX case-insensitive? Are bash commands on OSX case insensitive? I type "which TR" and it shows /usr/bin/TR, though there is no such binary there. Same thing for other binaries, when capitalized. Or is Terminal.app maybe doing this translation? How do I turn this off?

This is actually a feature of the filesystem of your disk, not bash or Terminal.app.

HFS+ (the Mac filesystem) is usually configured to be case insensitive but case preserving. This means that the file system will consider foo and FoO to be the same, but when you create a new file it will remember which letters where capitalized and which were not.

When you format a disk with HFS+ you can chose whether the file system should case sensitive or not. If you chose to format with UFS (Unix FileSystem) it is always case sensitive, AFAIK.

To check whether a disk is case sensitive, run:

 diskutil info <device>

For example:

 diskutil info disk0s2

Look for the Name: line. If it reads something like Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled) it means that it is case-sensitive. If it just reads Mac OS Extended (without the Case-sensitive) then it is only case preserving but not case sensitive.

It's your file system thing.

I'm using APFS, it's also case insensitive but case-preserving. This post provides a good explanation about H(ierarchical)FS and APFS.

  #include <sys/stat.h>
    #include <iostream>

    int main(int argc, char **argv) {
      struct stat sb;
      int ret = stat(argv[0], &sb);
      std::cout << ret << std::endl;
    }

output of this program using stat:

➜ ./a.out ./test_dir/cat.png
0
➜ ./a.out ./test_dir/caT.png
0

a simple bash test

➜ cp cat.png caT.png
cp: caT.png and cat.png are identical (not copied).

As for bash, I believe it's also case insensitive on Mac OS if you are using the default HFS or APFS since command executable is also a file and when you type a command name, the name is used search through search PATH to find that file to be executed.

➜ echo x X
x X
➜ eChO x X
x X


Can you video your facetime chat? Is there anyway to record video of my facetime chats with my grandkids?

Unfortunately you can not do it. There is not way of recording unless you jailbreak.


Do I need to have system administrator permissions to install from the Mac App Store? Where does the Mac App Store install its applications to? Is this a system-wide location, or somewhere inside my Home directory? Is it possible to use the App Store on machines where I am not a System Administrator (just like I can currently install almost all applications I manually download by putting them in ~/Applications instead of /Applications)?

Yes.

Apps are installed to the usual /Applications folder. Non-admin users can browse the store, but they will need an admin username/password to install apps. Source: Help menu of App Store/Purchase Applications/Buy, download, and install applications/To buy, download, and install an application:/Step 4.

On OS X Lion and above, you no longer need an administrator's username and password to install applications from the Mac App Store. However, you cannot delete them without an administrator's username and password.


The server quit without updating PID file (/usr/local/var/mysql/NAME.pid) I have installed mysql via brew. First start works, but after reboot, I got the following error:

The server quit without updating PID file (/usr/local/var/mysql/NAME.pid)

I start mysql with

sudo mysql.server restart

If I try to create a pid file on my own via terminal it will created, but after a few seconds it disappear.

sudo touch /usr/local/var/mysql/NAME.pid

Have anyone a idea?

YES.

Following homebrew caveats, did you setup launchd?

To have launchd start mysql at login:
    ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/mysql/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
Then to load mysql now:
    launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist

Well, now using mysql.server is pointless. It basically doesn't work, because (from my poor understanding) mysqld is now managed by launchd, and it is mysqld_safe. I don't know if actually because of that is different from what you control with mysql.server.

The solution I came up with is to not use launchd for mysql from brew.
Rather, I just use the  mysql.server tool to start, stop, and restart mysql.

If you want to follow my steps, this is what you need to do:

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist

And whenever you want to start the mysql server, use mysql.server start.

If you actually want to make mysql start at boot time, you can take that plist and copy it, delete the KeepAlice line, replace the string values under ProgramArguments with /usr/local/bin/mysql.server and start. After that do
launchctl load ~/path/to/com.file.plist

sudo chmod -R 777 /usr/local/mysql/
worked for me as file permission was not there


Do MacBooks slow down when not connected to power? I recently read about a device that reported its "minimum CPU speed" (which was 50MHz; max was 1500MHz) and I wondered if my MacBook Air (and other devices like iPhone/iPad) slows down the CPU when not plugged in.

Yes. Intel calls it "SpeedStep." Variable CPU clock speeds that adjust to conserve power based on demand. The feature is engaged whilst the device is on battery power. All Apple products support this feature (it's actually supported at the hardware level and the operating system's kernel) but since desktop devices don't have batteries, you'll never experience it on anything that isn't mobile.

Your MacBook Air supports SpeedStep, as does the iPhone, iPad, and the traditional MacBook Pro.

More info on SpeedStep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpeedStep#Mac

I haven't seen any evidence that the MacBook Air scales down its CPU to preserve power under normal circumstances.

That said, when your battery runs very, very low, you will probably notice significant slowing. Whenever I play a high-quality game on battery power, the game inevitably slows to a crawl when my battery drops below about 8% capacity. Plugging in will immediately increase performance, so this is clearly the intended behavior.

  The iPhone and iPad (and iPod) on the other hand are portable and not meant to be used when plugged in. They should maintain their CPU cycles when running on battery.

@Siddhartha's statement regarding iOS devices rings true for laptops as well, since they are both designed to be used primarily on battery power.


How do I assign a keyboard shortcut to an AppleScript I wrote? How do I assign a keyboard shortcut to an AppleScript? I found a script for automatically going back to the inbox in Office 2011.

It is also possible without paid 3rd party apps!
1. Open Automator.
2. Make a new Quick Action.
3. Make sure it receives 'no input' at all programs.
4. Select Run Apple Script and type in your code.
5. Save!

Now go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts. Select Services from the sidebar and find your service. Add a shortcut by double clicking (none).

Finally go to System Preferences > Security > Privacy > Accessibility and add Automator and the preferred app to run the shortcut.

You can go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> add a new shortcut. You can then select your script.

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18418?locale=en_US


How to programatically add folder to Spotlight "do not index"? Is there any way to programmatically add a folder to Spotlight's "Privacy" tab?
Either through Terminal or Applescript?

Often I want to click on an item in Spotlight results in Finder, and have that item's folder no longer be indexed.

I found that if you

sudo defaults read /Volumes/foo/.Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist Exclusions

you can see an array with all the items excluded.

But if you try to

sudo defaults write  /Volumes/foo/.Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist Exclusions -array-add '/path/to/folder'

it does NOT get added to the Privacy tab in the Spotlight Preference Panel, nor does it get de-indexed.

According to an answer here, a folder can be excluded from Spotlight indexing (achieving the same effect as adding it to the Privacy tab, although the folder won't actually be listed there) by either

adding .noindex to the end of the folder's name, or
creating an empty file .metadata_never_index inside the folder (eg with touch folder/.metadata_never_index)

You will need to restart Finder after adding  .metadata_never_index, either killall Finder from Terminal or logout from the Apple menu and then log back in. This method doesn't work in Mojave and later.

You could also just go to the system prefs pane for Spotlight. There you'll find a privacy tab. Just add the folders and files you don't want to show up in the index. That's it. They've already made it easy so you don't have to use the command line.

And If it's added to the privacy tab you can see what all you have hidden from the index just in case you want to index it it later.


How to access the iCloud Drive Archive folder on my MacBook? I couldn't find 'iCloud Archive' folder in the Finder. I have been searching it everywhere in the desktop to the different folders, but I couldn't find it. Where do I access it and its contents?

If you signed out of iCloud and kept a local copy, you should have an Archive folder created in your Home folder:

  If you turn off iCloud Drive or sign out of iCloud, you have the option to keep a local copy of your files that are in iCloud Drive. Whether you decide to keep a local copy or not, a new Desktop and Documents folder is created in your home folder. If you choose to keep a local copy, your files in iCloud Drive are copied to a folder called iCloud Drive (Archive) in your home folder. Then you have the option to move any files that were in your iCloud Desktop and Documents, back to your new local Desktop and Documents.

(Support article)

There is a possibility that:

You didn't keep a local copy
You moved/deleted the folder
You already emptied the contents of the folder

I use a CleanMyMac app. Under Files (Left side, bottom) there’s a menu called Space Lens. I found my files easily there and moved them back to the desktop in no time.

I feel called to answer this because I was toying with Manage Storage on my MacBook Air and clicked Store in iCloud… Lo and Behold, my storage looked kinda the same but I’ve experienced insufficient disk space when I used this feature.
So, when I disabled this feature (Store in iCloud…), it says all files uploaded will be in iCloud drive (archive) but there was no way to find it easily.

I don’t work with CleanMyMac, I used to think they’re malware or what not. Try it, and trust it. I’ve been using it since 2013. Good luck travelers.


10 bit/color channel support I am in need of 10 bit colour/channel (30 bit in total).
Everything in my workflow supports 10 bit colour/channel: DSLR, Eizo 276, D700 in my Mac Pro (late 2013). Unfortunately OSX 10.9.8 is still on 8 Bit/channel.

Can any body tell me a work around?

As far as I know OS X does not support 10 bits channels.

Here is a blog article which talks about it : Nope.
Another site says they thought Mavericks would bring 10bits channels, but nope.
4 month later, same site, still nope.


How to switch language of OS X dictionary? In Mountain Lion the OS X internal dictionary that you can fire up by right clicking a word, or by using the dashboard widget, seems to have gained at least one new language: German. Since German is my main language, but I also read a lot of English texts and website, I'd like to switch the dictionary languages on the fly. How can I do this?

Whichever dictionaries you enable in the Dictionary app's preferences will be available in the dictionary popover. You could either change these whenever you want to switch, or perhaps just leave both languages enabled all the time.

You can re-order the dictionaries by dragging.


How to remove shortcuts from Launchpad installed by Windows through Parallels 10? I installed Java in Windows 8.1 through Parallels Desktop 10 and got ugly Java shortcuts in my Launchpad.
I tried to launch "Java configuration tool" right click then remove from Launchpad, but it's still here.

How can I remove it?

updatetool and Java Control Panel should be removed.

Just found a useful article for my problem: http://kb.parallels.com/112798

1) Open finder, then press Shift+CMD+G and type "~/Applications/"
2) Locate your Virtual Machine's folder (there will be 2 similar folders, click on one that has application icons inside)
3) Remove all necessary shortcuts and they will be gone from Launchpad as well.

Maybe this is an old question, but I've just found an page on Apple Communities. I hope it will help others.