Posts

joining videos too slow in iMovie

 If like me you have found that sometimes you just want to join a series of videos from your phone together into one video, iMovie is slow and an overkill ... it takes at least as long as each clip to import each clip, then you have to drag and drop them to the timeline, export as, etc etc. This is much faster: on the Terminal, make a shellscript and put this into it. The script just looks at the mp4 files in your current folder and merges them. #!/bin/bash rm -f list.txt for f in *.mp4; do   echo "file '$f'" >> list.txt done ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i list.txt -c copy output.mp4 Also, if like me you find that MOV files take up tons of space you can convert them to mp4 which is much smaller, like less than half. In the below, replace input.mov with the movie file name, and output.mp4 with the new file name.                  ffmpeg -i "input.mov" -vcodec libx264 -acodec aac "output.mp4"
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script to erase all imessages in one shot

 #!/bin/bash echo "Quitting Messages..." killall Messages 2>/dev/null echo "Backing up old Messages folder..." cd ~/Library || exit 1 timestamp=$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S) cp -r Messages Messages_backup_$timestamp echo "Deleting all Messages data..." rm -rf ~/Library/Messages echo "Optional cleanup of iChat cache..." sudo rm -rf /private/var/folders/*/*/*/com.apple.iChat/* 2>/dev/null echo "All done. Messages will start fresh next time you open it."
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script to show all files with disk usage

Normally to get the disk usage of a folder you use get info or similar. However there are hidden files starting with . in their name that you can get info on, only in the terminal, using the du -sh command. If you have hundreds of them (which you do!) this becomes tedious. The following script gives you a directory listing with the files all indicated in file sizes and highlights on files of megabytes or gigabytes in size. (No, merely viewing the directory in the Finder does NOT show these files, plus the Finder's get info command is painfully slow at iterating a folder and finding its size). #!/bin/bash # Set Internal Field Separator to handle spaces in filenames IFS=$'\n' # Loop through all files and directories for i in $(/bin/ls -A); do       size=$(du -sh "$i" | awk '{print $1}')          # Apply colors: bold for MB, bright bold for GB     case "$size" in         *M) color="\e[1m" ;;       # Bold f...
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Old versions of Mac OS X

  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683 https: // apps.apple.com / us / app / macos-catalina / id1466841314?mt = 12  10.15 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/macos-mojave/id1398502828?mt=12   10.14 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/macos-high-sierra/id1246284741?mt=12   10.13 http://updates-http.cdn-apple.com/2019/cert/061-39476-20191023-48f365f4-0015-4c41-9f44-39d3d2aca067/InstallOS.dmg   10.12 http://updates-http.cdn-apple.com/2019/cert/061-41424-20191024-218af9ec-cf50-4516-9011-228c78eda3d2/InstallMacOSX.dmg  1 0.11  http://updates-http.cdn-apple.com/2019/cert/061-41343-20191023-02465f92-3ab5-4c92-bfe2-b725447a070d/InstallMacOSX.dmg   10.10
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script to correct the modification dates on files

It's been discovered that Dropbox bases its file dates on exif data in images, which is bad, because the image exif data is sometimes written by old-style point-n-shoot cameras which may or may not have had their date/time clock set correctly. In my case, I'm too lazy to bother as the UI on those old cameras is awful. Why use an old camera? well the latest polaroid cameras behave like that. Anyway. This script fixes the exif date as well as the file create, modify and open dates. #!/bin/bash # Check if both date and filename are provided if [ -z "$1" ] || [ -z "$2" ]; then   echo "Usage: $0 <date: yyyyMMdd or yyyy-MM-dd> <filename>"   exit 1 fi # Extract and clean inputs DATE=$(echo "$1" | tr -d '[:space:]')  # Trim any spaces FILENAME="$2" # Debug: Display received inputs echo "DEBUG: Received date: '$DATE', Filename: '$FILENAME'" # Check if the date is in a valid format (YYYYMMDD o...
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Multiple monitor setup

By default Mac OS X does not copy the menubar and dock to a new screen if you have additional monitors. One workaround is to allocate "spaces", ie set the second monitor to be a "space". They should then follow you when you work on that space. However if you want the menubar displayed and the dock displayed on both at the same time, OSX can't do it. Unless: 1. Install uBar . This lets you get a dock-like thing (actually a copy of Windows Tray). https://ubarapp.com/ ..advantage to this one is it gives you an app launcher menu plus clock and battery status. 2. Install MultiDock . This is the closest I've found to what I want plus it runs on older OSes. https://noteifyapp.com/multidock/  3. Install SecondBar . This duplicates the menubar (albeit not that well - doesn't show battery status, wifi etc... just the menu items - File, Edit, View etc.). https://secondbar.apponic.com/mac/ The combination above is ok.
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Netflix on Chrome shows invert colours

Netflix (specifically) on Chrome (specifically) on Mac OS shows invert colours Solution: Disable Hardware Acceleration in Chrome Hardware acceleration in Chrome sometimes causes graphical anomalies, especially on older operating systems. To disable it: Open Chrome. Click the three-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner. Go to Settings > System. Toggle Use hardware acceleration when available to off. Relaunch Chrome. Why This Happened Hardware acceleration offloads rendering tasks (like video playback) to the GPU. On older systems, the GPU drivers may not fully support Chrome's methods of video decoding or DRM (like Widevine). Disabling it forces Chrome to handle rendering through the CPU, bypassing these GPU-related issues. Potential Drawbacks of Disabling Hardware Acceleration While it solves the Netflix issue, you might notice: Reduced Performance: Complex web pages or animations may not render as smoothly. Increased CPU Usage: Your CPU might work harder during video playback or...
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