MacOS Annoyances

Macbook
See also Linux Annoyances for Terminal on Mac

https://hub.securevideo.com/Knowledge/Details/328
Zoom: exclamation point in triangle - enabling screensharing permissions
If you try to share your screen, you may see a triangle with exclamation point in it. This is because MacOS Catalina added a new category of app permissions called “Screen Recordings”. This prevents a user from being able to share their screen through an app until permission is given specifically for that app. If you have NOT granted this permission, then if you try to share your screen through the Zoom app, there will be error images instead (showing an exclamation mark inside of a rectangle, instead of a preview of what you might be able to share)

To fix this:

1. Settings
2. Security & Privacy
3. Privacy tab
4. Screen Recording
5. You may need to Unlock in lower-left of dialog (and provide password)
6. Allow Zoom, or other apps you want to be allowed to use your screen
7. Then lock
8. You may need to restart Zoom.

https://hub.securevideo.com/Knowledge/Details/331

MacOS Catalina prevents the camera from being used until permission is given specifically for the app (such as the Zoom app). This is requested the first time you join a Zoom session:
“zoom.us” would like to access the camera“
This is similar to the above (screen sharing). To fix this:

1. Settings
2. Security & Privacy
3. Privacy tab
4. Camera
5. You may need to Unlock in lower-left of dialog (and provide password)
6. Allow Zoom, or other apps you want to be allowed to use your camera
7. Then lock
8. You may need to restart Zoom.

Suppose you want all .xlsx files to open with LibreOffice instead of Numbers. Do the following.

1. Find a file with the extension (.xlsx), right click, and Get Info.
2. Under Open with, open the dropdown, find the application you want to open this type of file (LibreOffice), and select it.
3. Click the Change All… button.
4. Confirm that you want to make the change.

From this point on, all files with the same extension will open with this application.

From https://www.lifewire.com/reset-mac-printing-system-to-fix-os-x-printer-problems-2259970
If something goes wrong with printing, for example a bad file descriptors error, you need to reset the printing system. If you reset the printing system, you will

• lose all print queues and pending print jobs
• remove all printer preference files
• removes all printers currently in the Printers & Scanners preference pane.

To Reset Printing System:

1. Launch System Preferences
2. Select Printers & Scanners
3. In the Printers and Scanners preference pane, place your cursor in an empty area of the printer list sidebar (where the printers are listed) and right-click; select Reset Printing System from the popup.
4. You're asked to confirm. Press Reset.
5. You may need to enter administrator password or finger.

The printing system will be reset and you will need to add back your printer.

1. Turn device on
2. Press and hold the Cancel (X) button till green light blinks 5 times, then release
3. Output is printed. On second page you'll find the IP address.

This is likely an alert that you have received new mail. To check and remove this:

1. Open the Mail app
2. Select Mail > Preferences
3. General tab
4. In the drop-down menu next to the New messages sound, select your favorite sound or None.

20190905 Have seen videos that playback super fast when there is audio in the file. Also happens when watching YouTube videos.
Problem solved by https://9to5mac.com/2019/07/29/macos-fast-video-playback-bug-fix-coreaudiod-video/

• Open Activity Monitor
• Under CPU tab, find coreaudiod process, and click to select it.
• Click the X-in-stopsign button upper left of the Activity Monitor screen, and Force Quit.
• coreaudiod will restart and videos will play just fine.

20190923, happened again. Did the above, problem solved.

This from http://osxdaily.com/2013/05/17/see-all-running-apps-mac-os-x/

• Force Quit Applications window: Command+Option+Escape to summon the basic “Force Quit Applications” window (a simple task manager for OS X). Only shows windowed-applications.
• Activity Monitor: Shows all applications in addition to windowed ones. Command+Spacebar type “Activity”. Select an app, use the X n upper left to bring up dialog allowing quit and force quit choices.
• top: Run Terminal, command=top. Sort by cpu or memory usage: top -o cpu [or] top -0 rsize
• ps: Run Terminal command=ps ps aux [or] ps aux | grep process

Property files are stored in /Library/Preferences. Run Terminal to work with. From https://www.amsys.co.uk/time-machine-10-8-part-3-advanced-features/

Following is example for Time Machine, limiting its disk use.

Time Machine by default will use all the available disk space on your backup drive. The good news is that you can setup a maximum limit that Time Machine can use. All you need to do is specify in megabytes the maximum space limit. You can do this by multiplying your Gigabyte preference by 1024 bytes. For example if I wanted the maximum backup space to be 100GB, I would multiply 100 by 1024 which equals 102400. I can then enter this terminal command:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize 102400

This preference can be viewed within the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist file by

sudo defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine

To remove the limit, use the following command:

sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize

You have downloaded an application and you are sure that it is safe to run on your machine. However when you run it, you are presented with the error PROGRAM cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified.

The site https://www.lifewire.com/fix-developer-cannot-be-verified-error-5183898 has several suggestions, that I have copied here. These include looking for a newer or alternate version of the application. But I think most useful is:

1. Open Finder
2. Locate the app you're trying to open
3. Control-Click (or right-click) the app
4. Select Open
5. Click Open
   this should let you open it easily in the future

You want to delete files because the disk is full, but OS X won't let you do this because the disk is full. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201583

1. Reboot the Mac, and while it's rebooting press and hold Command-R
2. When the MacOS Utilities window appears, select: Disk Utility and click Continue
3. In Disk Utility, select the disk that's causing the issue, and use First Aid to look at and repair the disk.
4. When this finishes, you can First Aid another disk.
5. Then quit the disk utility and restart your Mac.
6. Then empty the trash.

For example, you have lots of subdirectories in your Videos directory, and how can you determine which is using the most space?

• Start Terminal
• Change to the directory you want to look at (for example, cd Videos)
• Enter the command du -hcd 1
  • du disk use
  • h human readable form
  • c show a total for the directory
  • d 1 depth, 1 means only top level, the subdirectories in the current directory

To use this and get a sort based on size: du -hcd 1 | sort -h (the -h on the sort reads first column as human readable values, that is it treats 800M < 1G as you would expect)

Suppose you're running Resolve and trying to archive a project, and maybe try to rename it. You can see that the Finder window for storing the project is the active window and it's also covered by the View Projects window, it's impossible to get to it. I figured out what to do on 20200105.

1. Hold down Alt/Option key, move mouse to the Corner of the (Resolve main) window; see double arrow ←→ appear, double-click.
2. Move the main window out of the way (to another monitor for example)
3. For the monitor with the View Projects window is covering the Finder window, switch desktops away and then back.
4. The Finder (hidden) window will appear; quickly drag this so it's outside the covering View Projects window.
5. You can then work on the no-longer-hidden Finder window and continue.

To enter full screen mode:

• Press green button in upper left
• Control-⌘-F

To exit full screen mode:

• Control-⌘-F
• Move mouse to upper-left corner and let it sit. You'll see green button, press it.

To work in bigger window without going full screen

• Press and hold Option key while click on the green button in upper left
  • Window expands, menu and dock remain visible
  • To exit, press and hold Option key and click on green button again
• Or double-click on the app's title bar

exiting full screen mode in DaVinci Resolve isn't working – once I put Resolve in full-screen, I can't get it to exit full screen mode. [20200208]

Shift-⌘-4 Take screenshot of area on screen you identify

In terminal mode

and be sure to do this to load the settings (or reboot):
killall SystemUIServer

You want to add one (maybe more – repeat if so) space to the dock so you can group the icons on the dock. This from here

1. Launch the terminal app. (It's in Applications/Utilities)
2. At the terminal prompt, type this command: defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{“tile-type”=“spacer-tile”;}'; killall Dock
   1. This will cause the Dock to reboot (go away and return) but now there'll be a space in it.
   2. Click and drag the space to where you want it.
   3. Repeat to add more spaces.
   4. To remove a space, right-click or control-click it and select Remove from Dock.

Add an icon to the Dock, like that for Downloads (shows recent downloaded files), that holds list of recently run applications. (Similar to previous item here.)

1. Launch the terminal app. (It's in Applications/Utilities)
2. At the terminal prompt, type this command:defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }'; killall Dock

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool yes; killall Dock

You're connected fine to a Wifi but you need to know the Wifi password to tell someone else or for another machine to connect. Here's how to see Wifi passwords on a Mac using Terminal (Thanks to https://setapp.com/how-to/find-a-saved-wifi-password-on-mac) You need to know the name of the Wifi you're connected to or that you're looking for. (There are other ways to get this info, but I like this one.)

1. Open the Terminal utility.
   1. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities
   2. Click on the Terminal icon to open the utility.
2. Type in this command: security find-generic-password -ga WIFIname | grep “password:” and hit Return.
3. If prompted, enter your Mac login ID and password.

For example: security find-generic-password -ga Home\ Wifi | grep “password:”
Using the \ in Home\ Wifi allows spaces in the Wifi name for the command.

You have two files you think are identical and you want to see if that's true.

From https://osxdaily.com/2018/02/06/use-diff-compare-files-command-line-mac/

You can use the diff command from the Terminal window.

Other options available in addition to -w:

• -a Treat all files as text
• -i Ignore Case
• -B Ignore blank lines
• -y side by side; output in two columns

Also consider the app CompareMerge2 from the Application store.

Found this article: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/common-mistakes-slow-mac/ saying to address these things:

1. Running antivirus in the background
2. Using fake security apps
3. Not maintaining enough free space
4. Temporary files and caches
5. Desktop clutter
6. Background processes
7. Thirsty apps
8. Not applying Mac updates
9. Not Optimizing Mac

The article has details on all of these. Thanks, MUO.

When you bring up the Finder, there isn't an “iCloud” available in the sidebar like it usually is.

from: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6618015

1. Open Finder and from the “Finder” menu, open Finder Preferences.
2. In the Preferences panel open the Sidebar tab. Click the checkmark for iCloud Drive.

In Finder, go to the directory, and then: Command-shift-.
Repeat to re-hide stuff.

I found that NordVPN was not working correctly and their support said to reset the MacOS networking. On my iMac running Catalina, I did the following to effect this:

• In Finder, go to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration
• Locate these three files and rename them (like add XXX to beginning of file name – preferences.plist to XXX preferences.plist)
  • com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
  • NetworkInterfaces.plist
  • preferences.plist
• Reboot the computer
  • From apple in upper left, choose Reboot
  • If this fails, start terminal and enter command sudo shutdown -r now

If you try to eject a USB drive and get message “drive wasn't ejected because one or more programs may be using it” here's some things you can try.

Suppose drive is called DD1.
(You would run these commands in Terminal.)

sudo fuser -u /Volumes/DD1

Suppose the command above returns process ID 129.
ps -fp 129
A process with /System/Library/ in the path is a system process. If it's in /Applications/ then it's likely a third-party app.

ps aux | grep 129

ps -o ppid= -p 129

A process with mds in it means it's a Spotlight app. To temporarily exclude the drive from Spotlight,
sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/DD1
or
System Settings > Spotlight > Spotlight Privacy
Click + and select DD1, and add it to the list.

Monkey Bread Software. Has TreeSize and Show IP in menu bar.

You have a number of files that you want to combine into a single PDF file.

• Maybe you have scanned 2-sided pages from a document, fronts then rears, and want to make a single PDF
• Maybe you have pictures you want to combine into a PDF

Let's assume all files are JPGs.

Here's what you can do. From How To Geek link

1. Open the Preview app. (Search using Spotlight (Command-spacebar) or in Applications directory)
2. Preview will prompt you to open file(s). Go to the directory holding the images you want to combine, and select them all using the Command key to select multiple images. Then, click the Open button. make sure that View Thumbnails is enabled else set it and repeat this step
3. In the Side bar, move the images into the order you want.
4. When you're happy with their order, select File > Print
   1. Look through the images. If any are not correctly oriented, go to that picture and Show Details
   2. There you can change Orientation and Turn on/off Auto Rotate.
5. Click the PDF dropdown, and choose Save as PDF.
6. In the Save As dialog, give the PDF file a name, title, etc and specify where to save it.
   1. You can add a password to the PDF, click Security Options.
7. Then press Save.

If you want to change things (add/delete images, re-arrange them) then open the PDF you created in Preview, and select View > Contact Sheet or View > Thumbnails and add/delete and re-arrange. Then save from the file menu.

“Read, edit, convert, merge, and sign PDF files across devices for completely free and without signing up.” This is what PDFgear claims. https://www.pdfgear.com/ with info on LifeHacker

Convert PDF to Word, Excel, JPG, PNG, and more.

Free downloads for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android. Rated 4.8 (as of 3/16/2024) in Mac Store.

Use MacOS Recovery to reinstall the Mac operating system.
All this section comes from https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

First make sure that your Mac has a connection to the Internet. These instructions assume you have an Intel processor. (If you have Apple Silicon, consult the referenced site for the process.)

1. Power on machine and immediately press Command (⌘)-R.
2. The four-choice menu comes up, where you can: Restore from Time Machine, Reinstall macOS, run Safari, and run Disk Utility.
3. You should choose to Reinstall macOS.

If you're asked to select a user you know the password for, select the user, click Next, then enter their administrator password.

Select Reinstall MacOS from the utilities window in MacOS Recovery, then click Continue and follow the onscreen instructions.

Follow these guidelines during installation:

• If the installer asks to unlock your disk, enter the password you use to log in to your Mac.
• If the installer doesn't see your disk, or it says that it can't install on your computer or volume, you might need to erase your disk first.
• If the installer offers you the choice between installing on Macintosh HD or Macintosh HD - Data, choose Macintosh HD.
• Allow installation to complete without putting your Mac to sleep or closing its lid. Your Mac might restart and show a progress bar several times, and the screen might be empty for minutes at a time.

After installation is complete, your Mac might restart to a setup assistant. If you're selling, trading in, or giving away your Mac, press Command-Q to quit the assistant without completing setup. Then click Shut Down. When the new owner starts up the Mac, they can use their own information to complete setup.

When you install macOS from Recovery, you get the current version of the most recently installed macOS, with some exceptions:

• On an Intel-based Mac, if you use Shift-Option-Command-R during startup, you're offered the macOS that came with your Mac, or the closest version still available. If you use Option-Command-R during startup, in most cases you're offered the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac. Otherwise you're offered the macOS that came with your Mac, or the closest version still available.
• If the Mac logic board was just replaced, you might be offered only the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac. If you just erased your entire startup disk, you might be offered only the macOS that came with your Mac, or the closest version still available.

You can also use these methods to install macOS, if the macOS is compatible with your Mac:

• Use the App Store to download and install the latest macOS.
• Use the App Store or a web browser to download and install an earlier macOS.
• Use a USB flash drive or other secondary volume to create a bootable installer.

Thank you to the Apple support site from where this information was copied: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

You have an old iMac or MacBook and a disk that is blank, either it didn't come with the machine or it has been erased. You want to get the machine running MacOS. Consider trying the previous section, then this one.
The players here: ABCD=Old iMac or MacBook you want to fix. EB9U=Running MacOS machine.

The process is:

• Get info about the old iMac or MacBook (we'll call the machine ABCD).
• Determine what MacOS versions can run on the ABCD machine.
• Get a TimeMachine backup from another iMac or MacBook that is running a version that can run on the old one (we'll call the machine EB9U).
• Boot the old ABCD machine and restore the MacOS from the TimeMachine backup of EB9U.
• Modify the ABCD machine name and other parameters to distinguish it.

We'll go over each of these steps in turn.

1. Visit: https://everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup
2. Enter the old device's (ABCD's) serial number
3. Do the Captcha
4. The information reported will show an ID. The ID is of the form “iMac 10,1”.
5. It's a good idea to write down the other information and attach it to the ABCD machine.

• You can do a DuckDuckGo (or Google) search to see what MacOS will run on your machine.
• For the purposes of this section, we'll assume that the machine is 10,1 or greater and not 19,2 or greater and that your EB9U machine is running High Sierra 10.13. High Sierra can run on this machine.

1. Supposing you have a machine (we're calling EB9U) running High Sierra and the ABCD machine can also run High Sierra (and you may have determined this in the previous step.
2. Perform a TimeMachine backup of the High Sierra machine (EB9U) onto a removable disk USB disk.
3. When the backup completes, disconnect the TimeMachine backup disk.
4. Power off the EB9U machine.

1. Connect the TimeMachine backup (from EB9U) to the old machine ABCD.
2. Make sure that the EB9U machine is powered off (or at least disconnected from the network).
3. Power on the ABCD machine and hold down the Command (⌘) and R buttons (this is the Windows key on a non-Mac keyboard). You may be holding these keys down for several minutes.
   1. See https://www.igeeksblog.com/how-to-start-mac-in-recovery-mode/ for details on booting to recovery mode.
4. Keep holding these keys down after the Apple logo appears, until the Recovery screen appears.
5. In the upper-right of the screen (on ABCD) you may see a way to connect to WiFi. Do this.
6. Select the “Restore from Time Machine backup” option
7. Select the Time Machine backup drive and the backup on that drive to restore from, and OK. You may have other confirmation messages to OK.
8. The restore may take some time, maybe an hour. Continue after the restore completes.

1. Rename the ABCD machine.
2. Change user and login information on ABCD.
3. Go through the Settings (Select the Apple and System Preferences) and adjust as necessary on ABCD.

You want to upgrade your iMac or MacBook but Apple won't let you because the machine is too old. The guy called Mr. Macintosh may have the answer. You can find him on YouTube, search for Mr Macintosh.

Some videos from him:

• How to Install Ventura on Unsupported Macs Easy OCLP Guide
  “You can Install macOS Ventura on Unsupported Macs from 2008-2016! I'll show you in a step-by-step easy way how to use OpenCore Legacy Patcher to install macOS Ventura on your old Mac & make it new again!”
• MacOS Ventura 13.5.1 Update - What's New?
• 2012 MacBook Pro with Ventura
  “Now that I've shown you how to install Ventura on a 2012 MacBook Pro, let me talk about how it works and if a 2012 MacBook Pro with Ventura is any good.”
• How to create a MacOS Ventura Bootable USB Installer Drive in 4 Simple Steps

OCLP = Open Core Legacy Patcher

I upgraded a late 2012 iMac 13,1 to have more memory and SSD. After the upgrade, the machine running Mojave 10.14 would reboot almost once a day indicating problem with Network or other issue. The machine would run otherwise, but I wanted to see how to keep it from rebooting. From a variety of sources, I tried all of the following in the order shown, and only after the last thing I tried did the machine stop rebooting daily.

1. Uncheck put hard disks to sleep when possible
2. Set wake for network access to Off
3. Reset SMC
4. Reset NVRAM
5. Switch local Wifi networks
6. Terminal commands: sudo pmset standby 0 <and> sudo pmset autopoweroff 0
7. Terminal command: sudo pmset -a standby 0
8. System preferences > Energy Saver: Don't put Hard Disks to sleep when possible (uncheck it)

Dealing with large zip files: you have a large multi-GB zip, you want to look inside and maybe unpack it.

Leawo Blu-ray Player works.

1. Mount the .iso (right-click on .iso file, )
2. Run Leawo
3. See: Open File and the DVD you've mounted
4. Right-click on the DVD you want to play
5. Play Disk

20201216 Success burning Linux Mint 20.1 to USB drive on iMac. 20221022 Success burning Q4OS 4.8 32bit to USB drive on iMac.

1. Get your iso, suppose it's in Downloads.
2. Insert your USB drive (make sure it's big enough)
3. Run Disk Utility, get the device name.
   1. Right-click on the USB and Get Info
   2. you'll see the /dev name there; it might be /dev/disk3s1 or dev/disk4s1. You might see just disk3.
4. Run Terminal.
5. ls /dev/disk*
6. Find the disk without the s1. Suppose it's disk3 (so you want /dev/disk3)
7. sudo dd if=Downloads/linuxmint-20.1-cinnamon-64bit-beta.iso of=/dev/disk3
8. If: “Resource busy” or “Operation not permitted” then eject the drive using the Disk Utility.
9. When dd completes (returns to terminal prompt), diskutil eject /dev/disk3. Unplug the disk after you see “ejected”.

• A 2GB iso file took about 40 minutes to complete; the dd command tells records in and out, bytes transferred, and how long it took. Be patient.
• Note that MacOS may be unable to mount the USB drive when the dd command completes. This is ok.

20191213 I downloaded a Windows 10 ISO file from https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10ISO
You can find other Windows versions to download, see https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/

From https://www.online-tech-tips.com/mac-os-x/burn-an-iso-file-using-mac-os-x/

1. Open Finder window, navigate to your ISO file, single-click to select it
2. File > Burn Disk Image
3. Insert disk if you haven't already; click Burn

Alternatively you can right-click on the ISO file and Burn Disk Image

(For OS X 10.10 and earlier) From Umass link

1. Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
2. Insert blank CD/DVD
3. Drag the *.iso file from a Finder window to the Disk Utility window, drop in left pane in the empty area below the Mac drive names.
4. Select the .iso file name in the left pane of Disk Utility, and click Burn (top left).
5. The Burn Disk In: window opens and shows your CD/DVD as destination
6. Click Burn
7. When done the disk will eject

You have a DVD and you want to put it into an ISO file for later use.

from https://superuser.com/questions/85987/mac-os-x-best-way-to-make-an-iso-from-a-cd-or-dvd

For the DVD, I used /dev/disk2. I verified this with diskutil list and unmounted it first.

$ sudo unmount /dev/disk2
$ dd if=/dev/disk2 of=mydisk.iso

Another user suggests

sudo diskutil unmount /dev/disk2
dd if=/dev/disk2 of=~/myCD.iso bs=2048 conv=sync,notrunc

Disk Utility - The on-screen prompts will guide you, but it will by default create a .dmg, which is an OS X-specific file format. Disk Utility will also create an ISO (.cdr extension) if you select the “CD/DVD Master” option before creating the image. You can rename the extension (.cdr to .iso) after creation if desired.

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_version_history

You want to insert some symbols into your text that aren't on your keyboard.
(This info extracted from Webnots)

You can also press Control-Command-Spacebar to open the Character Viewer. Scroll down to find the math and other symbols, like command (⌘) and option (⌥) and a host of others.

These symbols can be used with the standard keyboard. Consult Webnots for what you have to do so you can use other codes that require four digit hexadecimal Unicode points (or use ^⌘spacebar).