Mac Mail cannot access att.net after upgrading to OS/X Big Sur

After upgrading my MacBook Air 2018 to Big Sur, I noticed that my Mac Mail was unable to access my email account <myacct>@att.net. I had my email account setup using imap.att.net and smtp.att.net. I also tried imap.yahoo.com and smtp.yahoo.com with no success. Note that AT&T uses Yahoo! Currently email.

After trying for a couple of days without success, I decided to delete the account from Mac Mail and add it back again. Unfortunately, when I added my account in Mac Mail using “Add Other Account… | Mail Account”, it failed.

Another couple of days went by, I updated OS/X to Big Sur 11.2.3 and tried adding the account again. The problem persist.

I suddenly had an idea — since AT&T uses Yahoo! Currently email, may be I can use Yahoo! Mail to login. This time I added my account in Mac Main using “Yahoo Mail” and enter my AT&T email address <myacct>@att.net. It worked!!!

Strip location and other info from a photo on Mac

When we take a photo with a mobile phone or digital camera, a lot of information is embed in a .jpg file. For example, if you take a photo at home and post it on the Internet, others can use the embedded information to locate your home or learn about what type of device you have. It is a good practice to strip out those information before posting a photo on the Internet.

Unfortunately, OS/X does not have a convenient feature to take out the embedded attributes in a .jpg, .png or other image file. One option is to install a third party tool that offer such feature. Personally, I am always wary of a third party tool may be laden with virus or adware (may be accidentally). I prefer to use what is already available in the OS if possible.

The following are steps to strip most embedded attributes from an image file on a Mac with Preview.

1. Open an image file in Preview
   Typically, double clicking an image file in the Finder opens a file in Preview. If it does not, right click on the file and select “Open With | Preview.app”.
2. Press ⌘-A to select the whole image (or click “Edit | Select All”).
3. Press ⌘-C to copy the image (or click “Edit | Copy”).
4. Press ⌘-N to create a new image (or click “File | New from Clipboard”).
5. Press ⌘-S and give it a file name to save the new image (or click “File | Save…”).
6. (Optional) Press ⌘-I to open Inspector to check on the attributes in the new image file (or click “View | Show Inspector).

This is all you need to do to strip attributes from an image file. Hope this helps!

MacOS Mojave screen suddenly dimmed or brightened

I experienced some weird behavior with my 1 year old MacBook today. While I am reading, my MacBook suddenly dimmed to the lowest level (almost went dark). Occasionally, it automatically brightened to the highest level soon after dimming. I was surprised by the sudden behavioral change.

After playing with the power saving setting for a little while and the problem remained, I searched the Apple forum and found suggestions that the automatically adjust brightness feature may be the culprit. This option seems to be on the display option page for some time but it did not cause problem until now. A bug might have been introduced in the latest MacOS update. My Mac is running OS/X Mojave 10.14.6.

After unchecking the box next to “Automatically adjust brightness” on “System Preferences…|Displays” page, the problem did not show up again.

Here is the Displays page with the option.

Besides what I did, others also suggested resetting the Intel System Management Controller (SMC) which does ambient light sensing among other things.

Hope this help!

Trackpad Handwriting menu item disappear after OS/X upgrade

Trackpad Handwriting for Chinese disappeared from the dropdown menu after OS/X High Sierra 10.13.6 update. Actually, this is the second time I came across this problem. If you add the Trackpad Handwriting back, it will disappear after you log out. It may also disappear randomly and the selection does not show up for you to add it back. Some suggested that this is caused by corrupted cache, but I did not have time to find the root cause. I do have a solution.

Solution: The steps are:
1. Log out of iCloud.
2. Reboot.
3. Add Trackpad Handwriting back.
4. Log in to iCloud.

Logging out of iCloud is a bit scary. A lot of things connect to iCloud seem to disappear. It is ok. They will return after you log in again.

Hope this help!

Poon Fung

How to clean up flagged email in Mac

Recently, I keep finding a large number of previously flagged emails in my Flagged folder with no flag icon on the entries. The entries show up at the bottom of the list. Functionally, it is not too much trouble but it is just annoying the count on Flagged email is always wrong.

After some experiments, I found a solution. The steps are:

1. Open an email you want to remove from the Flagged folder. Find out which folder the email is in.
2. Click on the folder the email is in to select it.
3. Select menu item Mailbox | Rebuild.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 on any unflagged email in Flagged folder until all of them are removed.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Poon

 

Shrinking Mac OS/X Sierra Photo Library

I ran into a problem where one of my 256GB MacBook pro ran out disk space. It turned out the problem was caused by a run away Mac OS/X photo library. I had two photo libraries on the Mac totaling about 200GB (sizes shown in Finder, may not be actual sizes)!

First problem I found was the conversion of iPhoto library to Photos library left behind a 73GB file in /Macintosh HD/user/me/Pictures/. The solution was simple – delete the old photo library. I did not recover a full 73GB after I deleted the file, I got back 10-20GB according to Mac system storage page.

The second problem was new photo library /Macintosh HD/user/me/Pictures/Photos Library.photolibrary had a size of over 120GB. It was way too big for the 30k+ photos I had on the Mac. I did a bunch of clean up hoping that they would shrink the photo library. But to my dismay, the photo library only reduced by about 10%. The steps I took to do the cleanups are:

1. Export photos that I did not need on the Mac to an external drive. It took only seconds to export thousands of photos. The steps are:
   • Connect a USB hard disk to a Mac
   • Open Photos
   • Select File | Export | Export Unmodified Original for 10 Photos…
   • Select a location in the USB hard disk
2. Delete photos that I had exported
3. Delete photos in Recently Deleted folder in Photos
4. Run repair on photo library to make sure photo library is problem free. This takes a couple of minutes on a fast MacBook. The steps are:
   • Hold down <Command> + <Option> when opening Photos
   • Select Repair
     

I spent hours searching the Internet and Apple forum hoping someone had encountered the same problem before me and found a solution. No luck! I also posted a question on Apple forum but did not get any response. May be I was the only one that had come across this problem.

I noticed on other Macs that photo libraries grew and shrink when I added or deleted photos, but not the photo library on this MacBook Pro. Older version of Apple photo apps iPhoto or Aperture had functions to compact a photo library, however I cannot find the same feature in the new Photos app.

I was pissed! I decided to find a solution myself. Here is what I did:

1. Export all photos in photo library to a USB hard disk (same as above)
2. Delete photo library /Macintosh HD/user/me/Pictures/Photos Library.photolibrary on my Mac (I did this in Finder)
3. Create a new photo library. The steps are:
   • Hold down <Option> when opening Photos
   • Select Create New…
4. Import photos I just exported. The steps are:
   • Open Photos
     
   • Select File | Import…

After all the agony, my photo library is less than 17GB.

Hope this helps!

Poon
11/25/2016

My iPad Mini runs very slowly

My iPad Mini was running very slowly in the last few months. It took 2-3 times longer to start an app. Text showed up 1-2 seconds after I typed on a on-screen keyboard. I had only a few simple apps installed on the device. iOS and apps were all up-to-date.

I was about to throw in the towel… but I decided to give it a final try… I backed up the device and then reset it. To my surprise, it ran quite a bit faster. I repeated the process on another iPad and it also ran faster after reset.

It looks like some software configurations are causing iOS performance problem. The steps to fix them are:

1. Backup your device
2. Open Settings app
3. Select General page
4. Select Reset (at the bottom of the page)
5. Select Reset All Settings
6. Done

Hope this helps!

This article is also posted here.

Windows 10: Where did my configuration dialogs go?

Windows 10 made significant changes to Windows’ system interface. It is time consuming and frustrating to constantly search for settings using the new interface. I find it best to mix the old and new interfaces so that I can get things done quickly while I learn the new interface. With that in mind, I like to be able to bring up old control panel and other dialogs with a familiar interface when I want to.

Here is a collection of methods to bring back the old interfaces:

Show/hide desktop icons

To create a shortcut of My Computer and old Control Panel on the desktop, we use to be able to right click on a desktop and bring up a personalize dialog in Windows 8 and earlier. In Windows 10, we need to do a bit digging or run a command.

To bring up the dialog using a command, you can do the following:

Press <Window>+R to run a command
Enter desk.cpl ,,5

See Also: desktop icon dialog

An alternative way to bring up the dialog is:

Select <Window Button> | Setting | Personalization | Theme
On content page, select "Desktop Icon Settings"

Show/hide icons on system tray

In Windows 8 and earlier, we were able to customize icons shown on the system tray by clicking on the Configure link on a popup. In Windows 10, the Configuration link is missing. Configuration is move to setting page. You can access it by following the links listed below.

Select <Window Button> | Setting | System | Notification and Action
On content page, select "Choose icons to show on system tray"

Disable <Shift> input language switching

Windows choice of <Shift> for input language switching is confusing for a lot of users. Input language keep getting switched accidentally. To turn off the keyboard shortcut in Windows 10, you need to following the links below.

Select <Window Button> | Setting | Time & Language | Region & Language
On content page, under Language:
  Click on the language installed to show additional options
  Select Options
On a language page of the selected language, under Keyboard:
  Click on the language installed to show additional options
  Select Options
On a language option page, under Mode Change Key:
  Select None

Changing default language on Windows lock screen (login screen)

 

Sharing a printer connected to a USB port of my computer

 

Hope this helps!

Poon

 

Unable to connect MacBook to NAS server after OS/X upgrade

I have files on Western Digital NAS devices (MyBook Du0 and MyCloud acting as Windows file servers) that I share with Windows computers. My MacBook used to be able to access files on these devices without a hitch.

On May 17, 2016, I updated one of my MacBook to OS/X 10.11.5 El Capitan. Immediately after the update, I was not able to connect to  the NAS devices. I tried connecting with another MacBook that ran OS/X 10.11.4 El Capitan. Connection was flawless.

THE PROBLEM. When I accessed a NAS device, I was prompted for password.

After I entered a password, it either returned an error message or showed a list shares on the NAS device.

SOLUTION #1. To solve this problem, all you need to do is changing connecting protocol from SMB to CIFS. Just open Finder. Select Go | Connect to Server…. In the server address box, enter cifs://<server name> (e.g., cifs://leece).

NOTE: If you try to access a file server on a LAN, solution #2 is better.

I think OS/X 10.11.5 El Capitan changed the default SMB protocol to SMB2. Since my NAS devices are still using SMB1, so the connection failed.

SOLUTION #2. I came across another solution recently. It requires disabling SMB signing. It is a better solution if you are on a private network because SMB protocol is a lot faster than CIFS.

Apple updated SMB to require signing during connection establishment stage. That causes problem with servers that does not support such feature. SMB signing is a security feature to prevent man-in-the-middle attach. If you are accessing a server on a LAN at home or at work, you do not need to worry about such attach.

The solution is quite simple. You need to add a configuration file /etc/nsmb.conf and add two lines in the file. Then reboot you Mac.

[default]
signing_required=no

To create the configuration file, you need to open a terminal. Then, substitute current user as root.

$ sudo -s

Use vi to create the file and add the two lines.

$ vi /etc/nsmb.conf

Alternatively, you can create the file from command line.

$ echo >> "[default]" > /etc/nsmb.conf
$ echo >> "signing_required=no" >> /etc/nsmb.conf

Since you are root user, you can reboot from command line. You can also click the Apple icon and select Restart….

$ reboot

After you Mac reboots, login and connect to a server using smb://<server>. you should be able to do it now.

See Also: https://discussions.apple.com/message/30260816#30260816

Hope this help! Good luck.

---

10/5/2016 – MacOS Sierra

I updated my MacBook to MacOS Sierra 10.12 yesterday. So far connecting to NAS device with smb continue to work fine. I also tried switching to cifs://<server> and it also worked. The time it took to connect using CIFS seemed to be a  longer than before, but transfer rate is definitely higher. Note that I left the /etc/nsmb.conf in place.

Poon

 

Mac Mail Keeps Asking for Comcast Password

I have setup my Mac Mail to get emails from my Comcast account and it has been working for some time. Recently, it keeps asking for my password. After some debugging, I found out the problem came from a Mac Mail update. Here are the steps to fix the problem.

On Mac Mail, select

Mail | Preferences... | <mail account> | Advanced

Then uncheck option

[] Automatically detect and maintain account settings

Let me know if this is helpful.

Poon

4/17/2016