Saturday, November 27, 2021

Recent Questions - Ask Different

Recent Questions - Ask Different

keyboard layout with differentiated option keys (Alt/AltGr)

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 08:47 AM PST

Currently trying to setup a custom keyboard layout, with separate layers for right and left option keys.

Basically, mimic the same behavior we have on other operating systems with Alt and AltGr.

I would expect this to be possible since the operating system does seem to be able to differentiate those keys (as shown when playing with configuration of programs such as skhd, etc).

So, tried various setups (like using ukulele), but no tool manipulating keyboard layouts directly seems to be able to differentiate those keys.

Digging a bit deeper, I found an apple specification for keyboard layouts (apparently not up-to-date, but couldn't find any newer)

This seems to allow me to do exactly what I want to do, with the following keywords :

  • option: Left option key
  • rightOption: Right option key
  • anyOption: Either right or left option key

Except ... it doesn't work.

Here is a minimalist keyboard layout example :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>  <!DOCTYPE keyboard SYSTEM "file://localhost/System/Library/DTDs/KeyboardLayout.dtd">  <keyboard group="0" id="0" name="test 7" maxout="1">    <layouts>      <layout first="0" last="17" modifiers="commonModifiers" mapSet="ANSI" />    </layouts>      <modifierMap id="commonModifiers" defaultIndex="3">      <keyMapSelect mapIndex="0">        <modifier keys="" />      </keyMapSelect>      <keyMapSelect mapIndex="1">        <modifier keys="option" />      </keyMapSelect>      <keyMapSelect mapIndex="2">        <modifier keys="rightOption" />      </keyMapSelect>      <keyMapSelect mapIndex="3">        <modifier keys="" />      </keyMapSelect>    </modifierMap>      <keyMapSet id="ANSI">        <keyMap index="0">        <key code="12"  output="0" />      </keyMap>        <keyMap index="1">        <key code="12"  output="1" />      </keyMap>        <keyMap index="2">        <key code="12"  output="2" />      </keyMap>        <keyMap index="3">        <key code="12"  output="3" />      </keyMap>      </keyMapSet>    </keyboard>

Putting this in a .keylayout file in ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts/, selecting it, here is the behavior I get :

  • q : sends "1" instead of "0"
  • left opt + q : sends "3" instead of "1"
  • right opt + q : sends "3" instead of "2"

... yeah, I'm confused as well.

Please also note that :

  • putting any random string instead of one of those keywords makes the keyboard not compile, meaning the keywords are actually recognized
  • anyOption seems to be working correctly (like, setting it instead of rightOption in the example above makes both opt keys return "2")

So far, my best guess is that option and rightOption are still considered valid keywords, but ignored.

Does anybody know if there is a way to make those keywords work as expected ? Is my syntax incorrect ?

Otherwise, is there any other way to do this ? Like, another (newer or older) keyboard definition format ?

Apple Mail.app columns to be displayed

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 08:35 AM PST

How do I display in Mac's Mail.app the senders' name?

It only displays the email. I don't see any choice under Preferences.

Is the Ad Revenue business model only good for game apps? [closed]

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 07:22 AM PST

I recently released a non-game iOS app and integrated both in-app purchases and Admob as revenue streams. However, while I have made $500+ in IAP sales I have earned less than $10 in Admob revenue with 5000 downloads, and no one bought my 'Remove Ads' IAP. Is it even worth integrating Admob unless your traffic is much greater, like in viral game apps?

Reading a dictionary on iPad

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 08:34 AM PST

I want to read the dictionaries installed (from Settings->General->Dictionary) on my iPad. I know how to look up a word but not to read them page by page. Could you please let me know how?

What does it mean to have red bars in battery usage graph even while charging?

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 04:55 AM PST

I got a new iPhone (12 mini) this week and its battery usage graph does something that my previous iPhone (SE) didn't.

The old iPhone only showed red bars when battery was really low. The new one shows red bars randomly spread, even while charging. What does this mean?

enter image description here

Music app shows a -x dB for some songs

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 04:32 AM PST

Similar to this question I have a few music files inside music.app that plays very quietly.

After opening "Get Info" of the songs, the last tab shows a "volume" with - 3db (or less or more)

enter image description here

But the "volume adjust" of the same song is set to 0% in the option tab

enter image description here

How can I remove the -3 dB of the songs, and all the songs that may have this issue in Music ? (I have more than 40k songs so checking them one by one is going to take forever...)

Perhaps another app can help me with that ?

MacOS sound output to DLNA renderer - what are the options?

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 02:30 AM PST

I saw this question (with no answers) from a few years ago: Options for DLNA output of audio?

It's now 2021 and I find it hard to believe that things haven't moved on.

I want to be able to stream either the system sound output or the output from any media player that could access the local media library to a DLNA uPnP audio renderer device (Pure Jongo A2) but can't find a mac application that's capable of any type of playback.

There are plenty of DLNA server applications available, which are little use as the A2 doesn't have a physical interface, it just plays what it's told.

On android, applications exist to play local media and select the output as the A2 so I know it's possible. These include BubbleuPnP and AirMusic, which happily operate as local media players outputting to the jongo.

I have tried AirFoil, but it doesn't see the A2 on the network and seems more focused to the Apple AirPlay system.

Serviio is only suitable for clients accessing the mac as a media server rather than telling the renderer (A2) what to play, and there are other server softwares that fall into the same category.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

My system is running Catalina.

Thakyou

AppleScript: Did Safari’s "do JavaScript" stop working in macOS Monterey?

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 02:18 AM PST

This used to work in previous OS versions (10.14 and 10.15), but not anymore in macOS 12.0.1 Monterey:

tell application "Safari"      tell first tab of first window          do JavaScript "document.body.style;"      end tell  end tell

... does not yield a result at all. Even worse, tihs produces an error:

tell application "Safari"      tell first tab of first window          set x to do JavaScript "document.body.style;"      end tell  end tell    log x

... will yield: 'The variable x is not defined.' Is there anything I can do to make this work or is it a bug in macOS?

How do I select a specific audio input and sample rate on iOS 15?

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 01:52 AM PST

How do I select a specific audio input and sample rate on iOS 15?

On Mac, I just go in Audio MIDI Setup and select the port and sample rate of built-in or attached (USB/FireWire) audio devices.

Meanwhile on iOS, this seems to be impossible. Some apps let you select the input but not the sample rate. Some apps let you select the device but not which input to use on the device. Some apps let you pick a sample rate but not which device or input to use.

Surely I'm missing something, right guys?

How to merge a big number of JPEG pictures to a filename-labelled merged PDF file in OS X?

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 08:37 AM PST

I have a large number of JPEG files. Each JPEG file has a name in the format nameX.jpeg.

I want to merge them to PDF such that one JPEG picture is on one PDF page where the name of JPEG is a label on each new PDF page. This will result into a merged PDF with each JPEG picture on separate page.

How can I combine JPEG picture files to labelled PDF file in OS X?

How can my iPhone ring only from favorites, but silence from others?

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 05:57 AM PST

Most Android phones have such a feature.

iPhone's "Do Not Disturb" works, but just mentioned here and here, it rejects all others instead of keeping silent.

iPhone not making sound or waking up for push notifications

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 08:15 AM PST

I have an iPhone 13, running iOS 15.1, and I'm not being alerted to push notifications that arrive while the device is asleep.

When I tap the screen, the display lights up and the message preview is there, so I know it's receiving them, but it's not notifying me.

If the phone is awake, and at the Home screen, and a push notification arrives, the phone makes the notification sound and shows the notification as expected.

This is a problem because it applies to text message notifications; I'm missing texts because the phone isn't notifying me. It also applies to notifications from apps.

This is new to iOS 15.

Things I've checked:

  • The physical switch that turns on "Silent Mode" is Off.
  • In Settings/Notifications, "Scheduled Summary" is Off
  • In Messages settings, "Allow Notifications" is On and Sound is set to "Note".
  • In "Sounds & Haptics", the "Ringer and Alerts" volume is about halfway up, and plenty loud when I test it by tapping the drag handle.
  • No "Focus" is on.
  • No Sleep Schedule is configured in the Health app.
  • "Allow Notifications" is On for the specific apps I'm testing with, and the "Sounds" switch is On.

I can't see any reason the phone is delivering notifications silently when the screen is locked; please let me know what else I can try.

Copy and Flatten directory contents with zsh

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 08:13 AM PST

I have a directory tree, where each subdirectory contains several different filetypes, I want to copy one particular filetype from each of the subdirectory, but I need to flatten the results, so that they all end up in one directory - only copying the newly added files and preserving permissions I have been using cp under zsh, with the following command line

cp -np **/*.ftype ../destination

Which has worked brilliantly up until now. However, I've just reached a limit, I'm not sure if it's the number of directories in the source directory (currently 217) or the total number of directories / desired files, (somewhere between 2672 and 2690) but suddenly I'm getting the error argument list too long: cp

I was hoping to use something like cp -np [A-Ma-m]**/*.ftype ../destination and split the job into parts, but I get no matches found: [A-Ma-m]**/*.ftype even though I know I have directories starting with the these ranges.

I've also tried

find Base_dir/ -iname '*.ftype' | xargs -J% cp -np % ../destination

but it seems to break the directories at each point that there's a space character in the name, so it copies nothing.

I'm sure I'm doing something silly wrong, but any help would be appreciated.

MacOS Firewall: Program grayed out, can't be added to Firewall Options

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 07:29 AM PST

In MacOS Monterey (12.0.1), I am running Python 2.7 from an Anaconda virtual environment. Each time I run the Python script, I am asked if I want to accept incoming network connections.

I have tried multiple times to "Deny" or "Allow" this (which requires me to enter the username & password of an administrator user). However, each time I run the script I am presented with the same question.

When I go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Firewall > Firewall Options and press + to add an application manually, I am unable to select Python 2.7 in the file picker (it's grayed out, as can be seen in the screenshot below).

According to Get Info, my user has Read & Write privileges for this file, which also seems to be true in Terminal for the file and the directory it's in:

-rwxrwxr-x@  1  my_user  staff   8464 Oct 30 12:21 python2.7  drwxr-xr-x@  81 my_user  staff   2592 Nov 19 10:10 bin

How can I stop this annoying pop-up from reappearing?

enter image description here enter image description here

Java JDK 8/11/17 All Crashing on MacOS Monterey (12.0.1)

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 07:26 AM PST

It appears using Oracle SQL Developer will eventually crash Java on JDK 8, 11 or 17 when using macOS Monterey (12.0.1). While I've thought it was working it will crash eventually as reported now by several users. And what appears to be crashing is Java itself. I don't even think it is a specific Oracle SQL Developer issue. Has anyone else been having their Java applications fail on Monterey (12.0.1) and come up with a workaround or settings change that works? P.S. This is on Intel based Macs upgraded to Monterey. I'm not sure how M1 machines are doing.

System freezes then reboots but leaves no trace in console, how do I analyze this?

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 12:33 AM PST

I've been dealing with bewildering system freezes/reboots for months, but they leave no trace in the console at all. I am running macOS Big Sur on a 2019 Mac Pro.

I've done a complete from scratch rebuild twice, and this hasn't changed. Is there some kind of logging setting I'm missing?

Does Time Machine keep a log of files added / modified / removed during each backup?

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 04:04 AM PST

Alternatively is it possible to enable this as a configuration option?

I know that it's possible to export a diff between two Time Machine backups, however, it takes ages, it literally takes an hour over a network drive - therefore it's almost unusable except for a very narrow use case when the value of that information is so high that it's worth a high cpu, high network one hour long operation.

In case it's familiar to someone, I'm interested in something like Synology's HyperBackup does: it keeps a CSV file of all modified files during a backup.

Launch DMG drive script failing after restart

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 07:07 AM PST

I have an automation (screenshots of it here: https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0bB-1AiIWdJc1jmkfdjRbsAVA#Launch_Plex_Media_Automation_ )saved as an app in Automator with the following AppleScripts to mount an encrypted DMG file, enter the password in security agent pop up and click OK. macOS is Catalina.

It worked wonderfully for two years. Then it stopped working. After several attempts to fix the script, I went into Time Machine and retrieved the script from a time I knew it was working. It worked great for a bit but now it works a few times then stops entering the password. If I run just the script from Script Editor, it works great. Same if run from Automator. It will continue working in the automation until I shut my MBP down, then it's back to waiting for me to manually enter the password again. The automation has full disk access.

Suggestions to fix this please?

tell application "MountDMG"      activate  end tell    delay 5    tell application "System Events"      set value of text field 1 of window 1 of process "SecurityAgent" to "Password"      click button 2 of window 1 of process "SecurityAgent"      --> button "OK" of window 1 of application process "SecurityAgent"  end tell

suspect message "sshd-keygen-wrapper would like to receive keystrokes from any application"

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 05:04 AM PST

I am receiving this message about "sshd-keygen-wrapper would like to receive keystrokes from any application", here is a screenshot:

enter image description here

I find it suspicious... this binary is located at /usr/libexec/sshd-keygen-wrapper and never had this message before. the closest to a solution that I found is that it is harmless... does anybody know a bit more about it?

(disclaimer: I am using a MacOS, and this relates mainly with unix / linux software - so after some thoughts, I thought it was more apporiate to post it here than on another forum.)

"use F1, F2, etc. keys ..." in system preferences doesn't work, how should I do?

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 03:05 AM PST

I'm using macOS 10.13.6 and 101 windows keyboard. Each time I press Fn + F5 together I can play/pause my vlc player.

I'm trying to make it easier by lock Fn key so that I need to press just F5 itself to play/pause.

per a post

"system preferences>keyboard and mouse>keyboard" can lock Fn key.

enter image description here

However, no matter I check that option or not, I have to press Fn key and F5 key together to play/pause my vlc player.

Am I missing something?

Create a bootable NTFS drive on mac

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 05:00 AM PST

I have a working MacBook Pro as well as an old Dell laptop with no OS installed whatsoever. I'm giving the old laptop to a friend and I bought a Windows 10 license to install for them. The problem is burning the image properly!

There seems to be an issue in recent versions of Windows 10 where one of the files in the installer is too large for FAT32 so (unless I want to do some off-label dark magic during install, which I'd prefer to avoid) I need to burn directly to NTFS. I installed the trial of Paragon's NTFS for Mac, which lets me format the drive, but I haven't been able to find any Mac applications that will let me burn an image in NTFS.

  • Unetbootin explicitly requires FAT32
  • Boot Camp Assistant - in recent versions - apparently no longer supports external drives at all (it explicitly won't even proceed unless I physically disconnect all drives)
  • balenaEtcher provides a warning that it may not work properly for windows images and then fails during the burning process with no explanation

Does anyone have experience with burning NTFS on mac or know of a tool that could help here?

How to identify the iOS version from the Hello screen?

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 02:56 AM PST

I would like to identify the iOS version of my iPhone 6 from the Hello screen. Is there a way to tell the iOS version from the design of the Hello screen or from the MEID, IMEI or ICCID?

Skype notifications disappear while there are unread messages, on iPhone

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 08:03 AM PST

I have an iPhone SE with iOS 13.2.2 and latest Skype.

Today I noticed, that notification about new messages in Skype are not shown on the lock screen.

What happened was that I has a chat with a contact, then I locked the phone and put it into my pocket. Then it vibrated once, and again later. I took the phone, turned on the screen and, there were no notifications shown.

I unlocked and there, there were new messages in Skype.

Then after a minute I locked the phone again, but now I held it in my hand, with screen on (but locked). Then after a while the phone vibrated again and a notification for Skype appeared but disappeared again immediately. This happened a few more times, for each incoming Skype message (all from same contact).

Is this some bug? Or setting? It worked fine before, even today.

Delete all Bookmarks / Favorites from Safari

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 08:20 AM PST

I use Chrome as my primary browser (Work and Home) but have to fall-back to Safari for side-businesses during work, such as music streaming sites.

For consistency, I like to keep my browsers in sync. Chrome carries all my bookmarks and I prefer importing them all into Safari. An obvious limitation of this is that to keep my Safari updated with latest bookmarks of Chrome, every once in a while I must delete all bookmarks / favorites from Safari and add them again (just to avoid any duplication).

Now I'm unable to find any button in menus / preferences to Delete All Bookmarks. And deleting each bookmark individually is a pain since there are over 280. How do I delete all bookmarks from Safari without having to reset it entirely (deleting Cache, Cookies, History etc)?

macOS High Sierra 10.13.3, Safari 11.0.3 (13604.5.6)

How do I reinstall Apple Software Update in Windows?

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 05:26 AM PST

I uninstalled Apple Software Update in my Boot Camp Windows 7 install as it was crashing every launch, and a repair of Apple Software Update through Programs and Features didn't fix the problem.

However, re-running Boot Camp Tools' setup.exe (it gives me a choice to do a repair) does not reinstall the Apple Software Update it initially installed.

I suppose you could be in the same situation if you chose not to use Software Update when prompted during the Boot Camp Tools install.

How do I install the Apple Software Update associated with Boot Camp when Boot Camp is already installed?

In Outlook for Mac is it possible to set "Respond Without Comments" to be my default when accepting an invite?

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 09:00 AM PST

As it is, the default action on the "Respond" button is "Respond with Comments" and I have to click the drop down to send the response without comments.

Respond Without Comments

Please Respond.
Accept | Tentative | Decline

Respond With Comments
Respond Without Comments
Do Not Send a Response

99% of the time if I'm accepting an invite I don't need to comment.

I've looked through the Preferences for Outlook and I don't see anything related to this.

Paste to Subfolder in Finder List View

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 05:19 AM PST

Is it possible to paste a file to a subfolder in Finder with the keyboard?

I can paste into it with the mouse (using the paste command from the context menu) but CMD-V will always paste to the parent folder:

finder

I'm looking for a solution where I don't have to go into the subfolder before I paste.

Stuck in soft DFU mode

Posted: 27 Nov 2021 07:48 AM PST

My iPod (4g iOS 6.1.6) is stuck in soft DFU mode because I quit out of redsn0w too early. Then I also used an app to exit recovery mode and now it's in soft DFU mode. I had to use the DFU IPSW in order to put my device in DFU mode in the first place.

When I attempt to restore it in iTunes, after the "extracting software" step, the software says "preparing iPod for restore". After the 1-2 minutes, pass the boot logo does not show up and iTunes says "The iPod (iPod) could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (1601)."

I'm just going to try and let my iPod die and then reboot it. Any alternative suggestions on how to regain control of the device?
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