Monday, October 25, 2021

Recent Questions - Ask Different

Recent Questions - Ask Different

Ctrl + a/e/f/b stopped working

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 11:48 PM PDT

Usually, I use the following shortcuts on macOS:

  • Ctrl + a: Go to the beginning of the line
  • Ctrl + e: Go to the end of the line
  • Ctrl + f: Go to the next character
  • Ctrl + b: Go to the previous character

Recently these shortcuts stopped working. I don't know why. When I press Ctrl + a, some apps show nothing, some apps just show a. Is there any way to find out the reason and fix it?

P.S. I'm sure Ctrl works because all other shortcuts with Ctrl works.

Chrome is not Opening in Catalina

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 11:32 PM PDT

I have upgraded Mojave to Catalina. The Previous chrome browser has not opened a single time after Catalina installation. I have tried lots of ways but none worked.

Show password of mounted DMG file

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 11:06 PM PDT

I recently created 3 encrypted DMG files using the same password for all of them. Apparently I do not correctly remember the password anymore but one of the DMG files is still mounted. Is it possible to read out the password of a DMG file when it is mounted? The info folder of finder and disk utility do not seem to provide the possibility to show the password, but maybe it is stored somewhere within the DMG file and can be read out?

Do Photos and Videos always 4K when using DPI Scaling on a 4K External monitor?

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 09:21 PM PDT

I am really curious if I make my text bigger on my Dell 4K U4320Q by using DPI scaling to change 3200 x1800 from 3840 x 2160 if Videos and photos will continue to use the full resolution. Examples of Apps might be Youtube in Safari running a 4K Nature Video, the Photos App displaying a Hi-Res Image or a Hi-Res Image in the preview App. Do Photos and Videos actually display full 4K despite the scaling in Retina Mode?

The poster below says that Photos and videos are not subject to scaling on a 4K Monitor in Retina mode

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/342722/342695

A bit counter-intuitive this actually means that the display is using the full 4k resolution, but font sizes, window decorations, etc. is scaled to have the same size as with a 1080p display. This is what Apple calls "Retina Mode": Video, photos, etc. will display in their full resolution

I tried a 4K YouTube nature video and turned on stats for nerds. The Viewport/Frames were at 3200 but the current/optimal resolution was 3840. So it seems like video is being played at full 4K even though the webpage is the lower 3200 resolution.

So I believe the video part is indeed displaying full 4K video even in a scaled environment.

For the photo part how could I also measure a photo and make sure it is displaying full res even though I have scaling turned on?

Or is the idea that Photos and Videos will bypass the screen resolution and run 4K on 4K screen in "Retina Mode" no matter the scaling incorrect?

Running out of space on iPhone 13 Pro Max - How do you backup Cinematic Mode videos so they can be edited later?

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 08:45 PM PDT

How do you backup Cinematic Mode videos so they can be edited (with all Cinematic mode features) later?

How to force a window to go fullscreen mode?

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 08:10 PM PDT

The top-left green button of some apps (NoMachine) can only do "zoom" (plus sign) but can't do "fullscreen". How can I force them to go fullscreen? I know that for normal windows, you can use the Option key switch between "fullscreen" and "zoom" mode, but the Option key doesn't work on this kind of windows.

enter image description here

Why are iOS Safari History results so slapdash/incomplete?

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 06:13 PM PDT

Thats all of it. My history results, especially on the iPhone vs. the iPad, are not anywhere near complete, for even the last 6 hours!

And is there any way to control the deletion or retention of history?

Find My 'Play Sound' notifications history

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 05:41 PM PDT

Someone who's member of our iCloud family was in a funny mood and played with us by notifying some of our devices using the Play Sound feature in Find My app.

An email is sent telling that an alert has sounded on the device with hour and date but containing no other detail — so we wonder out of curiosity if we could find some sort of logs listing who could have triggered those alerts ?

I can't find any information for this precise case, it always falls on iCloud accounts help or Find My features (We found out who it was after few minutes but couldn't tell at the time of the alerts ringing).

What is a program to display PDF's in a dark theme friendly fashion on MacOS?

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 01:52 PM PDT

I am trying to read all my PDF's in dark theme, to preserve my vision since I work at a computer all day.

Adobe Acrobat reader offers this feature, in that you can go into accessibility and change the background color and also the color of text. This would work great, except that on my machine, an M1 Mac Air, it constantly crashes, refuses to open, or just sits there consuming 100%+ CPU resources.

Ideally I would like another program which at the least, will flip black and white text, and at best, would actually make the text and background a user-configurable color, like black and green.

Most importantly, it won't crash constantly and hopefully be more lightweight than Adobe.

Any help is much appreciated!!!

Edit: this question may be a duplicate, check other answers here Change background colour for PDF when Viewing

How much memory/cpu is mds_stores consuming for you?

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 02:24 PM PDT

I'm trying to figure out if the spotlight process "mds_stores" is consuming more resources than it should be. I've turned spotlight on and off and reindexed everything but it's still regularly using between 40 and 80% of the CPU on my lightly loaded system and chewing through insane amounts of memory even after a reboot. Right now, the real memory and private memory it's consuming is over 32 GB on a 64 GB machine. This doesn't seem normal to me.

As far as I can tell, Spotlight finished indexing my drive over a day ago yet mds_stores is still consuming a bunch of resources.

I've told Spotlight to ignore my external drive and the caches. Is there anything else I can do?

If I highlight and annotate a PDF in iBooks, will those highlights be kept if in Adobe Acrobat?

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 11:59 AM PDT

If I highlight a PDF in iBooks on an iPhone and save the PDF, will those highlights be present if I open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat? Or vice versa?

Hard drive full no matter what I try

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 07:02 PM PDT

I have run into the issue where no matter what files/applications I delete I cannot actually free up any disk space on my Early 2014 Macbook Air with 128GB of SSD storage. The most recent exercise was to delete Xcode ~10GB. Before the delete, the storage summary showed 3.6GB of free space. After the delete, the storage summary showed ~4.8GB of free space. What did change was the allocation between "Applications" and "System". Before the delete, System was 82GB, and Applications was 20GB, afterwards, Applications went down to 11GB, and System went up to 92GB.

Here are the items I have tried / won't consider trying:

  1. Yes, I have emptied the trash multiple times
  2. Yes, I have booted into safe mode and then back into normal
  3. No, I won't install a third-party piece of software to delete screensavers/applications backgrounds, logs. When interrogating Library and System folders those folders do not show 90GBs of usage they show something like ~10GB
  4. Yes, I have tried finding the listing of Time Machine backups and deleting them (there are none listed)

So hopefully someone has encountered this issue and found a substantive solution. I am personally wondering if the "cloud" drives I have installed are just consuming all of the free space (I have two providers).

For reference, I am running macOS 10.14 (Mojave)and I am unable to install the latest update because I cannot free up enough space on the system to do so!

I have an apple tv and air pods max if I buy a iPad pro and change the bass

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 11:19 AM PDT

I have an apple tv and air pods max if I buy an iPad pro and change the bass setting on the iPad will these bass settings transfer over to my apple tv and desktop mac? And seems I can't update my air pods without an iPad or iPhone.

Not enough space to restore Ipad from iCloud backup after forced ipadOS upgrade

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 07:49 PM PDT

EDIT: Was able to restore from an earlier icloud backup, but this still is a weird issue that other people may encounter, so I'm leaving this up in case someone else has a better solution.

Earlier today my iPad tried to restart itself and got stuck on the Apple logo for hours. Trying to look at it on Finder on my Macbook Pro, it said that there was a problem with my iPad and I'd need to update the OS to iPadOS 15 from my Macbook Pro, which I tried. It installed successfully, but then got stuck on the Apple logo when it tried to turn on. I tried installing the upgrade again through the same initial process. The same thing happened. In the end, I decided I'd just restore the iPad and get everything back from my last iCloud backup. So I restored to factory settings.

When setting it up again, I selected the option to restore from my last iCloud backup. It began to download, but then the iPad restarted itself and loaded the default apps and nothing else and wouldn't continue restoring from the iCloud backup. I got this message in Settings:

"Restore in Progress - An estimated 600 MB will be required to finish restoring your apps and data."

Eventually even that disappeared and there was no option to continue restoring from my iCloud backup. I called Apple Support and was on the phone for almost an hour, only to be told to try restoring to factory settings again and try the whole process all over.

So I tried, and the same thing happened, though it still says "Restore in Progress" and hasn't done anything for over 12 hours. I looked online to see if anyone else had the same problem. According to an obscure Reddit post, apparently the problem might be that there isn't enough space to restore from the back up. However, when I looked in the Settings of the iPad it says there's over 100 GB available on the iPad and I checked the size of the last iCloud backup from the Apple ID section in my Macbook Pro's system preferences, and it's only 17.7 GB. If the problem requires me to delete some random apps and data from my iPad in its current state, that's not possible, as I don't even have 600 MB in apps to remove right now. Everything else is system data and iPad OS.

Before my iPad forced me to upgrade it earlier today, the storage was almost full due to a bunch of downloaded apps. Maybe the iPad is trying to restore all of those apps? I shouldn't have to restore all of those to get my important data back, though. I had a lot of important work stored on my iPad's iCloud backup, like artwork on Procreate that I'm being paid for.

Is there anything else I can try to get my iPad to restore from my last iCloud backup? I can't afford to buy an iPad with a larger internal storage space right now.

Xcode Installation Fails

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 07:06 PM PDT

I'm trying to update Xcode, but it is stuck (this is what it looks like). Other posts I've seen suggest a bunch of different things, each of which didn't work for me:

  • waiting overnight for it to install didn't fix it

  • downloading the package from Apple's developer page worked in terms of installation, but the app itself doesn't work. When I downloaded it, the updated Xcode opens (stored on my Desktop), but it freezes when I try to do anything. Here is the relevant console output when that happens:

More than one bundle with the same factory UUID detected: { "FC0957C6-10A1-469B-AA54-5A9FFE718A93" = MetadataImporterPluginFactory; } in CFBundle 0x7f8f6fd18410 </Users/[my name]/Desktop/Xcode.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/uuid.mdimporter> (not loaded) and CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x7f8f71829000 </Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/uuid.mdimporter> (not loaded)

  • I've tried restarting my computer, which didn't fix it (it just made me redo the whole update).
  • When I try to cancel the installation, nothing happens. This is the console message:

Received request to cancel install but we are past download and there is no current interface to stop a PackageKit install

macOS Calendar default not available

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 02:48 PM PDT

I am using the Apple Calendar app on Big Sur (11.4). I connected it to an Exchange account and can see the calendar events. However, I cannot set the default calendar in preferences:

preferences

There are no calendars listed:

default calendar

When I add a new event from a .ics file, it gets added to a new calendar:

enter image description here

Then I end up with my original calendar as well as a new calendar just for the new event:

enter image description here

Why is that?

Blocking/Remove Boot Camp ablities

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 06:08 PM PDT

I'm looking for a way to prevent Boot Camp from being used on a mac. IDEALLY while keeping the user as an admin (or close to it). The issue I see is that basic user access is too restrictive and admin is too liberal. Users should be trusted to install their own apps yet I don't want them booting from a different partition.

I've tried to delete Boot Camp Assistant but that is restricted, even when using csrutil. I can't even set the permissions on it.

Any ideas on how to disable or remove it while allowing users to install other apps?

I saw How to disable Boot Camp and prevent any other OS installations? but it doesn't have an accepted answer (because it doesn't answer the question)

Kaspersky Anti Virus software

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 08:03 PM PDT

I'm trying to install Micro Trend Anti Virus; however, I at one time had Kaspersky Anti Virus software. I can't download Micro Trend because it says Kaspersky needs to be removed. However, I cannot find Kaspersky anywhere on my MAC in order to remove/uninstall. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to remove this?

In MacOS, is there a way to prevent unwanted input when the screen is locked?

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 09:08 PM PDT

When I walk away from my MacBook Pro (2016, if it matters), I lock the screen, but leave the laptop open. If my cat decides to make a bed from the computer while I am away from the desk, when I return, I often find a number of programs opened once I unlock the screen.

My only assumption is this is the Touch Bar, hotkey shortcuts, or some combination of the two. How is this even possible? Shouldn't the computer be completely unresponsive to non-login input? If that's not the case, how can I make that the case? I don't want anything but the ability to log in.

Currently running Mojave (10.14.6), but this happened on prior versions as well.

I only see a .pkg file when restoring from DMG in TransMac. What is wrong?

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 11:02 AM PDT

I finally got my hands on a second-hand MacBook Pro (Early 2011). However, the disk is corrupted and doesn't boot, and Internet Recovery proves ineffective as the OS X Lion Setup fails. This is the only somewhat-modern Mac that I own, so I tried to make a USB installer via windows. I used a genuine Apple install DMG (Located Here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683), and when I go and restore the USB with the DMG file I only see a .pkg file, in place of the installer files. It also doesn't show up in the boot menu of the Macbook.

I have seen other people have success with this method, so I'm not seeing what I'm doing wrong. (See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OpF0jJMJzI) What should I do differently?

Desktop icon for mounted NAS volume changes location and it annoys me

Posted: 25 Oct 2021 12:01 AM PDT

Question relates to the desktop icon for a mounted networked drive.

MacOS 10.14.6 - Seagate NAS SMB - Computer stays on and is set to never sleep. Airport Extreme.

I mount the drive/volume and I get an icon. I put the icon in a specific location and then at some point it moves to first available location on desktop. How can I make it stay where I put it? It's not a huge thing but it is annoying.

Every other icon on my desktop stays where I put it (Time Capsule drives, Time Machine USB drive, internal drive, files, folders, etc.)

My hunch is that the connection to the drive times out and then automatically reconnects, during this process the icon goes away (connection to drive ends) and then comes back and goes to first open location (connection to drive is re-established).

Any ideas on how to keep my NAS drive/volume icon where I put it?

Mac Pro starts with folder icon and question mark, HD is empty. How to install Ubuntu?

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 02:05 PM PDT

I have a Mac Pro with an empty (no existing partitions) 1TB HD connected to it. I am using a windows USB keyboard and want to install Ubuntu on it.

There is no Mac OS installed or running on this computer. I have no access to another Apple device.

It is not a Macbook. This is the exactly version: Mac Pro 3.00x/4x1/x1900xt/250/sd/ap

Questions:

  • how to boot the Mac Pro using a USB stick and install Ubuntu on it?
  • can I do it using a simple USB keyboard and Microsoft Wireless mouse?

Using Magic Keyboard + Mouse with 2 MacBook Pros (MacOS Catalina)

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 07:34 PM PDT

I have two MacBook Pros running MacOS Catalina. On my desk, I have an external monitor and a Magic Keyboard & Mouse. I'd like to easily switch the keyboard & mouse between the two laptops when I connect them to the external display. Right now, I have to re-pair the keyboard and mouse everytime I want to switch. Is there a way to automatically have the keyboard/mouse pair to whichever computer is awake and running?

How to convert a drive from the GPT format to the hybrid GPT/MBR format when using High Sierra (macOS 10.13.2)

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 01:58 PM PDT

Previous versons of OS X and macOS automatically converted pure GPT drives to hybrid GPT/MBR format when the 2nd, 3rd, and/or 4th GPT partitions were formatted "MS DOS (FAT)" by the Disk Utility application or the diskutil command. I am not sure when this changed, but this no longer happens under High Sierra (macOS 10.13.2).

My Mac needs the hybrid format in order to BIOS boot the installed Windows operating system.

What is a procedure to manually convert the drive back to the hybrid format?

Below is the output from the command diskutil list disk0.

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):     #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER     0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.0 GB   disk0     1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1     2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         249.5 GB   disk0s2     3:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                200.0 GB   disk0s3     4:       Microsoft Basic Data COMMON                  50.0 GB    disk0s4     5:                  Apple_HFS Refind                  200.0 MB   disk0s5

The BOOTCAMP volume is NTFS formatted and the COMMON volume is FAT32 formatted.

Note: The next two commands were executed after starting up from macOS Recovery.

Below is the output from the command gpt -r show /dev/disk0.

      start       size  index  contents            0          1         PMBR            1          1         Pri GPT header            2         32         Pri GPT table           34          6                    40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B       409640  487304680      2  GPT part - 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC    487714320        496             487714816  390623232      3  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7    878338048       2048             878340096   97654784      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7    975994880        696             975995576     390616      5  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC    976386192     176315             976562507         32         Sec GPT table    976562539          1         Sec GPT header

Below is the output from the command fdisk /dev/disk0.

Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 60788/255/63 [976562540 sectors]  Signature: 0xAA55           Starting       Ending   #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]  ------------------------------------------------------------------------   1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -  976562539] <Unknown ID>   2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused         3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused         4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

Why am I getting an “invalid active developer path” when attempting to use Git after upgrading to macOS Monterey?

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 03:46 PM PDT

After upgrading to macOS Monterey, I tried to run git from Terminal but it kept giving me the following error:

xcrun: error: invalid active developer path (/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools), missing xcrun at: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/xcrun.

How do I fix it?

outlook: apply rule to past messages

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 10:59 AM PDT

I use outlook as client for an exchange server.

I created several rules that are local to the mac (as opposed to server side rules), and I want to apply them for past messages.

I can't find a way. - Even when I create the rule, I don't see any option to apply it to past messages.

It would be fine also to be able to move several selected messages to a folder, but when I create a filter it seems also difficult!!! If I select all messages in the filter, upon right click on one of them, the selection goes away (because of the message preview I think)

If I select multiple messages in Inbox, right click is working and I could move all of them, but I must perform multiple selection manually...

Is it that difficult on Outlook 2011 overs 14.3 ?

Zagg Keyboard (enter key)

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 10:46 PM PDT

I have a Zagg Keyboard. For a while, it worked fine when I used Messenger. I think the problem came along when I updated the software. The issue is before the update the Enter key moved the cursor down a line. Now the Enter key sends the message. I can't stand this and want it back like it was before. Any ideas???

How to save contacts on iPhone with broken screen?

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 10:07 PM PDT

I dropped my iPhone and broke the screen (is just black). So I bought a new iPhone but I want to sync all my contacts and of course the screen is locked and moved to the side. It looks something like the image below.

enter image description here

On the lock screen I can only see numbers given below.

12  45  78  0

Now I can't unlock my phone to sync to iCloud. How can I save my contacts ?

How can I increase brightness on Mac without Mac keyboard

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 11:26 PM PDT

I'm using a MacBook Pro and I broke it a while back. So, the keyboard doesn't work on the laptop. I hooked up a keyboard to the USB port so I can still use it. I'm using a Dell keyboard.

Last night I wanted to listen to music without the brightness of the screen. So without thinking I turned the brightness off. Now I can't get the screen back so I was wondering if there's a way I can use the Dell keyboard to get the screen brightness back?

Remap "Home" and "End" to beginning and end of line

Posted: 24 Oct 2021 07:53 PM PDT

Most of my computing time is spent in Linux (with occasional time in Windows). On these platforms the Home and End keys universally jump to the beginning or end of the current line.

I am gradually getting used to using the one Apple computer in my life, but it is still frustrating than these keys seem to be bound to the beginning and end of the document and there doesn't seem to be any key at all for the line based actions.

My question:

  1. Are there existing keybindings I'm missing for beginning and end of line? (I mostly use a Terminal, Chrome and LibreOffice)
  2. Is there a way to rebind the functions of these keys to the functions I am familiar with? I am willing to give up the document based versions which seem of little use to me.

Also two caveats:

  1. I am not the only user on the system. It would be nice if my user settings didn't break other peoples experience. If this isn't possible, I think I probably have the strongest preference!
  2. I do use multiple languages and switch between keyboard layouts, so any solutions would be expected to work even when toggling between multiple keyboard layouts.
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