macOS

TL;DR: Hey guys, question here for everyone familiar with Homebrew on macOS, particularly through GUI apps such as Applite. I had a bunch of problems when installing apps through Applite in a macOS VM, and was wondering is this was likely more of a fault of the VM, Applite, or a legitimate Homebrew issue. I made a checklist of all the apps I wanted to install and/or test out, along with their successes and failures. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k0FKaoWZD7JC0P641MalLtzefpMaZZVWfWZpLHMr7qw/edit?usp=drivesdk

Long explanation: See, I’m a tech – both in the sense that I’m a power user who can familiarize myself with just about everything, and that I do tech support and break down a lot of things for other people. As a result of this, once I first used Linux a few years ago and started learning about package managers for other systems, Homebrew caught my eye. I saw people recommending it left and right, and as soon as I got comfortable with my Mac and found my application suite, I knew I was going to test it.

…thing is, a majority of applications that I tested on through a virtual machine failed in one way or another. Almost to none of them seemed to allow in-app updates or work with apps like Latest (which use Sparkle for update detection). Some part of this could be due to the virtual machine nature of this test (I created a macOS Sequoia VM ON macOS Sequoia using UTM and Apple Virtualization), and some part of it could be Applite specifically (though I set the app up to use my Homebrew directory set up via the actual Homebrew website, not using “Applite’s custom directory”), but either way, a lot of programs just flat-out didn’t work. Any thoughts as to why this could be?

Also, before you say “just use the CLI,” there’s a reason I used Applite, and it’s the same reason I mentioned tech support: Most people still do not feel comfortable using a command line interface. Convenient as it may be for fellow “power users” with brewfiles and the instantaneous setups, most users still default to their app stores. Helped FIVE people with their Macs on installing different browsers, and they ALL went to “why isn’t it in the App Store?” If Applite or another free program works for this, that could solve the “missing App Store” problem for average users. With it being Homebrew-powered too, that could even open up the door to help people become more technologically savvy. Question is though, was I just doing something wrong, or is Applite not a viable solution for homebrew installations? I’m going to test things out one more time in another VM today, and if I still run into the same issues, I’ll post a follow-up comment. Thank you all for your help!

Unfortunately, my old Reddit account was recently suspended without notice (though I believe it to be because of "spam" from reminding people who comment about missing Launchpad that they can submit feedback requests), but this has not halted my progress with developing this app. Instead, here I am now on Lemmy!

Hey everyone, I'm proud to announce the first beta release for LaunchBack, my FOSS Launchpad remake built entirely independently of Spotlight and Launchpad/Apps dependencies!

• Application Reordering: By opening LaunchBack's settings via the menu bar and switching to the "General" tab, you are now presented with two options: Alphabetical and Manual sorting!
  • With Alphabetical sort, your apps are automatically arranged from A-Z on all pages, no manual reordering required.
  • As for Manual sort, with the option enabled in the "General" tab, you can switch to the "Apps" tab and see your applications in a column, my personal take on an improved reordering system for LaunchBack over the classic grid-based method. This may eventually be changed and I plan on refining things further in time, but this is currently functional.
    • While manual sort is still being worked on since drag-and-drop is seemingly unavailable on macOS via Swift's "editmode" function, you can move apps up or down in the list with Command and the ↑ ↓ keys or the onscreen "Move Up" and "Move Down" buttons.
• Custom App Directories: While this is still very much a WIP feature in more of a placeholder-ish state, LaunchBack brings a feature unavailable in the classic Launchpad in the form of custom application directories! In theory, you should be able to click the "Apps" menu from the settings and add folders containing your apps, a feature which could be useful for applications not stored on-device or in the traditional /Applications directories.
  • There is a known issue with this where duplicate application entries may appear with recursive directories and/or other circumstances. This has usually been resolved with an application relaunch or system reboot.
• Do note: The LaunchBack grid is not (yet) updated in real-time, and you must either Relaunch LaunchBack (available via a button at the bottom of the Settings window) or close and reopen the app manually to see changes. This applies for toggling manual and alphabetical sort, showing the rearranged apps in their new order, and custom app directories. Please do not submit issue requests regarding the grid not updating in real-time.

Why LaunchBack? See, while other solutions for accessing apps exist on macOS, there have always been three fundamentals of Launchpad that make it so beloved: A fullscreen app grid with search, application reordering, and folder support for organization. With Launchpad's removal in macOS 26 Tahoe, plenty of alternatives or solutions have arisen with some of these, but as a new developer learning more about computer science, I figured this would make for a great starting project to learn Swift, hoping to eventually capture (and surpass) the functionality of Apple's original Launchpad application. Furthermore, projects like OpenShell from ClassicShell on Windows inspired me to make the app fully free and open-source, which I was successfully able to achieve. Previously with release 1.0, I was able to achieve the first of these fundamentals, and now with Beta 1.1.0, I proudly present a solution for the second fundamental, as well as another LaunchBack exclusive: Application Reordering & Custom App Directories!

So then, without further ado... here's LaunchBack 1.1.0! Watch the GitHub page to follow along and be notified for new updates such as folder support, Sparkle updates, Homebrew installation, and more! https://github.com/trey-a-12/LaunchBack/releases/tag/Beta

I get this prompt sometimes when I connect my phone to my computer. It doesn't tell me what items it's referring to, but I know I don't want anything on my computer that isn't there already. But it looks like if I don't go ahead with it, the mystery items will be removed from my phone.

Anybody know what the thinking is behind this? Maybe it's just a sync setting I've set myself, but it reads like some kind of crazy ransom note :)

I chose 'Don't Transfer' in the end. I have no idea what the consequences are. I don't notice any differences on my phone.

MusicBee on Windows has a plugin that achieves this. On macOS I can only find one (Album Flow), and it works only with my Apple Music library.

I'm looking for something that works independently, with a directory of music I point it to. Does anything like this exist today?

I've done quite a bit of searching, I hope I'm missing something obvious because it's an extremely intuitive and accessible way to browse and listen to music. Thanks!

I have a Corsair K95 mechanical gaming keyboard with full led backlighting. When I switched from Windows to Mac it kept the last program I had and everything was illuminated static red. In the last couple weeks however it changed to Roy G Biv and does a spiral pattern.

I installed Corsair's iCue app to try and change back to the red, or anything else static. The problem is the keyboard never shows up in the iCue app for me to modify it. If I unplug the keyboard my profile within the app cannot be edited. So it is detecting there is a Corsair product.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Is there an alternative app that works with Corsair? I do not need any fancy programs, I just want to stop the spinning lights.

I never knew this was an option. I was viewing a video from Finder in QuickLook. While jumping back and forth between apps, I accidentally hit Cmd-L in Finder when I intended to be in Safari (to copy a URL). The video rotated left. Cmd-R, predictably at this point, rotated back to the right. I assume images would work as well, but the video hasn't finished playing so I haven't confirmed.

I've been a Mac power user for decades and this was a satisfying discovery.

Let me explain.

Coming from windows, if i have my monitor split into halfs with firefox, for example, youtube on the left and lemmy on the right, and I am typing on lemmy, I just click on the youtube video on the left once to stop/start it.

On macos in same scenario, the youtube window is "inactive" and then i have to click it once for the window to be the active one, and again to stop the video. It feels like my mac is not responsive because I expect the first click to stop the video. It's been weeks using a mac and I still can't get used to this for some reason.

I know this is nitpicking but is this normal macos behaviour or can this be changed?

I've got a couple of files (empty directories) in the Trash I can't delete. I own them, the mode is 777 and whether I use Empty Trash or use rm from the command line (with sudo or running as root) I get "Permission denied". I tried booting into recovery mode and setting csrutil to disabled but that did nothing. Any ideas? It's not the end of the world but every time I empty the trash I have to deal with the dialog box about not being able to delete them.

I have used Macs since the PPC days. I own at least a dozen and have owned dozens over the years. For work I always use the latest and biggest MBP. I have gotten more and more annoyed with MacOS changes over the years. Some of it is just my general annoyance with recent technology trends, and some of it is just design choices that don’t tickle my fancy.

On a whim, I bought a 2009 13” MBP. I used to own one of these back then. Since it can’t run anything modern, and my goal was to recapture some of what once was, I installed Snow Leopard. I always thought back to Snow Leopard as peak OS X. I didn’t know how much of that was just rose tinted glasses and nostalgia. So after popping in an SSD and maxing it out at a whole 8GB of RAM, I started using it. I’m in the process of trying to give up streaming services, so I have been using it to rip DVDs for my plex library. I found old versions of everything. Most of which I still had on my fileserver. Handbrake, various emulators, iMovie 6, iTunes 9, etc. Modern web browsing is a non starter with Safari from back then, but I found interweb and it works fine for the occasional thing I use it for. I mostly just grab what I need from my server.

The keyboard is significantly better than my M4 MBP and it has been delightful not dealing with the absurdly large trackpads Apple uses today. The biggest benefit is Apple not being so intrusive back then. The OS is much more utilitarian. It has everything I need and what I don’t is out of the way. The extra thickness is completely worth it to actually have all the ports and the disc drive. Swapping the drive and memory took less than 5 minutes. Still plenty sleek.

I wanted to test my feeling that Mac has gotten worse over the years and it definitely has. Practicality forces me to use modern computers, but I intend to keep daily driving this old gal for as long as I can. First time I have enjoyed working on a computer in years. That’s saying something since writing code and working on a computer is literally my job.

Hey, I will move soon to macOS as my main os. I am currently using Linux as my main os and from what I know, macOS is similar to Linux. I also wanted to ask some questions beforehand: There are few cli package managers for macOS but which one is the best? Will it be hard for me to use macOS if I am using currently Linux? Which keys on mac keyboard work same as keys on windows keyboard?

I'm fed up with MacOS

I find the colours really distracting. I've tried using those Greasemonky / user scripts but I suspect Safari doesn't permit them to address the favicons, because they don't work.

I also would like the extension icons to be monochrome. Anybody knowledgeable enough to say whether there's an API that allows this kind of thing?

It's easy to lose Applications in the Applications folder and the Groups view isn't always consistent or helpful. It's also limited to one group, which isn't that helpful if you want to search for one app for several possible purposes.

Tagging is a solution, but if you apply to Applications, directly, you have to give permissions each time, which gets annoying. Worse still, any update will wipe the tag.

But if you apply tags to Aliases for each application, you side-step these problems and can use multiple groupings. I think that the alias will still works when applications are updated, unless they change name.

So far, this is working as intended. I've not yet updated any application 🤞

I ran through a bunch of obvious app categories and have been tagging as and when I can be bothered. It's not seemed too arduous.

The mic icon pops up on my top bar from time to time. I have checked over any over and in settings all currently opened pages, and all other pages are set to deny use of mic. The only way I have found to get rid of it is to close Safari and reopen it after a few minutes. Is there any way to get more info about what is causing it beyond the "safari" in the screenshot?

Hello everyone!

So I have just bought myself (of course at the expense of one of my kidneys) a MacBook Pro M4. So far well it's an absolute great machine. It is the first time for me to ever use a Mac and I'm really enjoying it.

I'm curious if any of you have some recommendations for some Youtube channels that specifically focus on MacOS content?

I'm busy right now playing around with homebrew and discovering some linux commands and I'm amazed to find that my favorite apps can run on this machine. Just overall really excited.

Thanks in advance everyone :)

I've checked the boxes for the extension. On the browser toolbar I've chosen "Allow for all websites". I've also restarted the browser. It still doesn't work and just gives that message about permissions (pictured).

There hasn't been a new release in a few years so I don't know if it's supported anymore, but it's working well for me.

Edit: In case you don't already know, there is an excellent collection of Winamp skins here which the app supports: https://skins.webamp.org/

My 2013 trashcan recently had its SSD filled up to the max (likely from BOINC data.) So far diskutil cannot initialize or clone the drive. It gives error 69620. There’s certain data from the home folder I’d like to recover if I can.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can pull this data to another drive?

Currently I have an NVMe drive installing macOS to it, which should do much better with space (1tb to replace the stock 256gb) but I’m not sure if there’s a way to mount the full drive after installing the NVMe+adapter into the Mac. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I got a new Mac with an M3 SoC and ran fastfetch, add one does on a new computer. It listed swap as being disabled.

Activity Monitor shows 0 bytes in swap. top and htop show 0 of 0.

I got on a call with Apple Support and the best I could get out of them was that “new Macs don’t use swap,” which is absolutely not true. People are still reporting heavy swap usage on M3 Macs.

So… any ideas? It’s a very hard problem to research, since half the internet wants to disable swap to save their SSDs.

For what it’s worth, this machine has 16GB of RAM and I haven’t pushed it past that, but I’d expect it to behave quite catastrophically if I did.

I’m looking for any possible insights, really.

I have a Macbook Pro connected to an external display. I prefer to have my dock on the larger external display, but when I boot up (or when my Mac wakes from sleep) the dock is on the Macbook display. I have tried in vain to find a way to keep it on the external display, or at least more easily move it there, other than the standard "move the mouse pointer to the bottom of the screen twice" method. Can this be accomplished with Shortcuts or an Automator action?

I'm not sure what I did to summon this little window, or how do get rid of it. Can anyone enlighten me? Thanks.

I have a Macbook Pro, which has an external display connected via a USB-C dock, with the Macbook positioned to the right of the external display and the external display set as my primary display. I spilled some coffee on my Bluetooth keyboard over the weekend, and some of the keys weren't working, so I moved the Macbook so that I could use its keyboard. I found that I like this setup better, as the Macbook's screen is closer and easier for my aged eyes to see. The only problem is that my Dock remains on the Macbook display, no matter what I do, and I would prefer it on the larger, external monitor. I tried repositioning it in the settings, and I can get it to move to the external, but as soon as I move the Macbook back below the external, the Dock jumps back to the Macbook. Is there something I am missing?

I have my Mac desktop configured to snap icons to a grid. However, for a while I've noticed that moving an icon causes them to snap to the upper-right corner of the screen, ignoring where I actually want them and overlapping existing icons. The only way around this seems to be going into Display Settings, changing any parameter such as Grid Size, and then moving the icons again. Has anyone else been experiencing this?