Background Notes

So, I’ve sold my much beloved Alienware M14xr2 in late 2015, that quad core hell of a power machine, opting for something much lighter and sleeker – as I do foresee a lot of travelling around in the near future. This is my note on my Macbook Air 11″ 2015, and I’ll be updating it as I go along.

I’ll dub this the “OSX Missing Manual”. Since June 3 2018 This is now grouped by ‘type of tricks’ so they appear nicely grouped together in the Table Of Contents.

 

 

My OSX

 

Specs

Jul 2018 Update: I am on OSX Sierra.

Purchased on 29 Nov 2015 from Apple in Ginza, Tokyo. They had

• 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor
• Intel HD Graphics 6000
• 4GB memory
• 256GB PCIe-based flash storage¹
• For more see Apple Macbook Air Early 2015 11 Inch Technical Spec

 

How was it?

This is written in Juln 2018, 3 years after the purchase. Well it’s my first mac – and I must say I really, really liked it. It’s got GUI flow that is better than Windows, a bit less configurable than Linux but 80% of the stuff I want is there. It’s got the shell and *NIX architecture underneath. And yes I stay away from the Apple ecosystem. So far, great machine – carry it with me everywhere, rock solid – fell down once with a small dent but still looking good. Light, good battery – for a 2015 year machine, it hasn’t shown its age by much.

 

Sounds and Music

 

Put iTunes to sleep and use alternative (simpler) music player

For whatever reason, in case you disliked iTunes (like I did), you can always put it to sleep as follows:

First: Open your iTunes and clean your libraries. This will free up space. For me, I have my source files backed up elsewhere so I can safely remove the music library.

Once you are ready, pop in below command:

iTunes will be moved out of the application folder into ~/tmp-itunes. I take it one step further and .zip / archive the file and deleted the .app file.

What do I use to play my music? I use nightingale. Not fancy, but that’s the whole point. It does the basic stuff right.

Converting m4a to mp3

Similar to JPG to PNG, except we will be using ffmpeg

 

 

 

 

 

Display Management

 

Dual Display from MBA & Managing Dual-Display Wallpaper

Jun 2016, updated Dec 2018 for High Sierra & Mojave

But not that straightforward:

• For left display, I used Thunderbolt->HDMI cable.
• And on the right display, I used USB3->HDMI adaptor with DisplayLink driver – which can be downloaded HERE, summary below

Important note on USB3->HDMI DisplayLink adaptor/driver:

• Extended display works for something that doesn’t need a lot of refresh rate, like editors, websites, but not stuff like HD videos or games.
• After HighSierra DisplayLink doesn’t work as before and require driver V4.3.1 – they implemented a workaround via AirPlay to make extended display work.
• For some reason on my MBA it only works on the USB port on magsafe side. If I plug it on the other side it interferes with WIFI badly – I can’t even connect to WIFI ! Could be due to how the HW was organized internally.
• Due to the workaround, I need to be super nice to the device, basically I need to turn off the monitor first, before unplugging the cable. Else it kinda screw up the driver.

Closing Lid, but keeps OSX awake!

Aug 2016

Sometimes, you wanted to close the MBA lid, but not have it fall asleep. Maybe y ou are moving between meeting rooms, maybe you want to watch a movie  but your charger is on a different desk. The app you need is INSOMNIAX (http://semaja2.net/projects/insomniaxinfo/)

An aptly named app, insomnia is when you try to sleep but you can’t fall asleep. This app will keep your osx awake even when you close the lid! (a gesture asking OSX to sleep/hibernate)

 

Multiple Desktop / Dexpot = Mission Control Spaces

Nov 2015

Mission control  can create new desktop. Keyboards shortcut to jump to desktop # can be set in keyboard.

OSX by default reorder desktop based on frequency of use, which is really confusing. To fix the desktop number and prevent OSX from reordering, go to mission control preference and untick “Automatically rearrange Spaces…”

 

 

 

 

 

Images and Pictures

Converting JPG to PNG

Aug 2016

Mac only accept PNG for background. So if you download wallpapers from the web, you need to convert them. if you have imagemagick this is very easy, if not you can homebrew it.

if you have it installed, the mogrify command can mass-convert all jpg in a given folder to another format (like png)

 

Stopping the Photos app from launching when a media device connected

I guess for enabling it again you put a NO…

Just a little terminal command, will do the trick:

 

 

Productivity

MS Office: Changing file save location to Desktop

1. open Excel.
2. On menu, go to Excel > Preferences > General. At Startup, open all files in: …. (Select your folder location, in which case I use my Desktop ). 
   Then, Close & re-open.

Yum / Apt-Get on OSX? HOMEBREW

Aug 2016

I missed the package management of Linux distro (like Yum or Apt-get), it annoys me that there are no straightforward package management bundled with OSX out of the box. But by now I noticed how things work on OSX-land, and sure enough – I stumbled on Homebrew.

Once installed, package installation is as easy as brew install <pkg_name>

Example, to install imagemagick (which enables commands like mogrify and convert), simply type:

 

Desktop Control

 

Position Window with Cmd+Left or Cmd+Right

May 2016

As a windows user, you’ll be so familiar with win+left or win+right. Sadly even with el capitan, this is still not available in mac! Found an open source software that does the trick. Bit sad that this still have to be done via an app, instead of being natively built into the OS – and to make it run I need to give the app special permission to make changes on my OS. Not cool, apple… not cool.

App’s called ShiftI, downloadable from  https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt/release

 

Info display like Rainmeter? … Ubersicht !

 

 

 

 

Troubleshooting

 

Display Flicker issue & Resetting System Management Controller

Jan 2016

One morning, I open my mac to find that the screen is flickering. It looked like the refresh rate on the display is set incorrectly, but there is no way to set this refresh rate. After a bit of googling, it looked like the issue could stem when external display is being connected/disconnected and there are reports of this happening with El Capitan.

Quick call to Apple land me on the hint, and my hunch was right.. resetting SMC is the way to go. According to Wikipedia record for Apple SMC (System Management Controller) [ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Management_Controller]:

The SMC has roles in controlling thermal and power management, battery charging, video mode switching, sleep and wake, hibernation, and LED indicators. It also enables enforcement of the Mac OS X End User License, allowing it to identify when it is running on non-Apple hardware.^[2]

Apple releases occasional model-specific updates to SMC firmware which correct bugs and defects in the system.^[3]

The instruction to reset it can be found here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht201295
For convenience, below are the steps, quoted from above link:

Mac notebook computers that have a battery you should not remove include: MacBook Pro (Early 2009) and later, all models of MacBook Air, MacBook (Late 2009), and MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015).

To reset the SMC:

1. Shut down the computer.
2. Plug in the MagSafe or USB-C power adapter to a power source and to your computer.
3. On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time.
   • Note: I hold this for about 10 seconds just in case, 10 secs work for me
4. Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
   • Note: On releasing this simultaneously, the magsafe charger LED blinks green once – as a confirmation that SMC reset is done successfully.
5. Press the power button to turn on the computer.

On boot, the display has gone back again to normal! I’d say SMC reset can be used to sort out issue related to the area that it manage: “Controlling thermal and power management, battery charging, video mode switching, sleep and wake, hibernation, and LED indicators.”

 

Rainmeter = Ubersicht

Dec 2015

If you like Rainmeter (or Conky for Linux) you will like Ubersicht. This is a pic of my desktop, and that’s what you can get with the Ubersicht Widgets. You won’t find the below widget on widget gallery because I made them myself – I will upload it once I am done with it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filesystem, Storage, and Other Geeky Shit

 

 

Enable NTFS

https://www.hackintosh.zone/file/506-ntfs-driver-for-mac-os-x/

Simply, the missing NTFS driver for your mac. Now you can write to NTFS drives – and have it used between windows and mac!

 

Using USB ThumbDrive on both Mac OSX and MS Windows

Oct 2015

Windows is on NTFS and Mac is on Apple HFS – so on what file system should you format your USB Drive?

Short answer is: use exFAT (read more) – when purchasing  a thumbdrive, more often than not the manufacturer will format it in FAT32 – which is a most accessible file system format, as it can work even with older version of Windows. However, chances are you don’t need to go FAT32 as you either don’t have to deal with older Windows, or don’t have Windows at all. In which case, use exFAT

Benefit:

• This allows file larger than 4Gb to be stored in the thumb drive
• It is still readable by Windows 7 or higher, so you shouldn’t be missing out that much
• Mac OSX will detect file size / capacity of the thumb drive properly – df -h on a FAT32 partition always shows 100% capacity, not sure why (?)

How?

• Start Disk Utility > Select partition > format as exFAT – it’s that simple.

 

Changing Hostname

Oct 2016

System Preference > Sharing > Computer Name

Changes are not completely set, ping succesful but hostname display in terminal remains the same even after quitting the terminal process. So did a computer restart for good measure, hostname is reflected correctly on terminal prompt.

Using ‘default’ command

Sep 2015

Apparently default is a command used to read write config parameter, concept is akin to a command line version of the Windows Registry Editor, or a quick mode of select config file in Linux /etc/*. A quick man default shows:

To see all configurable items, use: defaults read | less

Taking screenshots quickly, saving it to custom location

Sep 2015

• Command-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop
• Command-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop
• Command-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop
• Command-Control-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard
• Command-Control-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard
• Command-Control-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it to the clipboard

To change location of the screenshot output folder:

For more info, see OSX Daily article on this topic.

Reducing delay in Dock Autohide/Show

Sep 2016

I noticed that the initial delay set by Apple is way too slow and you can’t set this in the GUI, which sucks. A quick google found code snippets that uses system commands, which can be triggered in the terminal:

The above command writes the configuration of com.apple.Doc and set autohide-delay to zero (no delay), it is then followed by killing the Dock process.

OSX handles the process killing & respawning very gracefully: all Windows that is running didn’t just drop / disappears – instead all minimized windows is restored, and the new dock respawns almost immediately. Gracefully handled by the OS.