I am using a MacBook Pro 13-inch 2018 running macOS Sequoia 15.4. I would like to access the local files of the Signal Messanger App, which are – according to the support website – located at ~/Library/Application Support/Signal. However, when navigating to ~/Library/Application Support, there simply is no Folder called Signal. As far as I am aware, this folder should not be hidden, so I should be able to see it normally in the file browser. Does anyone know why this folder does not exist?

How can I get Spotlight to index a directory in the system's Library folder? I'm trying to get Spotlight running 10.10.3 to index some folders in the Macintosh HD/Library folder. I'm not getting any search results from these folders so it appears Spotlight is not searching/indexing them. The folder can be found at: Macintosh HD/Library/FileMaker Server/HTTPServer/htdocs/ I am getting search results for other Library folders, such as my web root folder at: /Library/WebServer/Documents/ Is there a way to force Spotlight to also index the Library/FileMaker Server/HTTPServer/htdocs folder as well? (I want to index FileMaker Server's web root folder that I referenced above. I will not be indexing the FileMaker Server database folders as I have excluded those from Spotlight)

Where are the transcripts that are generated from recordings in the Voice Memos app stored in the file system? I did a:

grep -r PATTERN ~/Library`

for a known unique-ish pattern from one of the transcripts. It's been running for 45 minutes and hasn't found any matches yet. The audio recordings (*.m4a) and *.waveform files are stored here: ~/Library/Group\ Containers/group.com.apple.VoiceMemos.shared/Recordings/ I noticed a CloudRecordings.db sqlite database file (binary) in that directory, and none of the table names look obviously transcript-specific. I did the same grep command in this directory, and it completed and didn't find any matches.

$ sqlite3 -readonly ~/Library/Group\ Containers/group.com.apple.VoiceMemos.shared/Recordings/CloudRecordings.db .tables
ACHANGE                         ANSCKRECORDZONEMOVERECEIPT
ANSCKDATABASEMETADATA           ANSCKRECORDZONEQUERY
ANSCKEVENT                      ATRANSACTION
ANSCKEXPORTEDOBJECT             ATRANSACTIONSTRING
ANSCKEXPORTMETADATA             ZCLOUDRECORDING
ANSCKEXPORTOPERATION            ZDATABASEPROPERTY
ANSCKHISTORYANALYZERSTATE       ZENTITYREVISION
ANSCKIMPORTOPERATION            ZFOLDER
ANSCKIMPORTPENDINGRELATIONSHIP  ZMIGRATION
ANSCKMETADATAENTRY              ZRECORDING
ANSCKMIRROREDRELATIONSHIP       Z_METADATA
ANSCKRECORDMETADATA             Z_MODELCACHE
ANSCKRECORDZONEMETADATA         Z_PRIMARYKEY

I also did a: find ~/Library/ -iname '*transcript*' which returned 100 filenames/dirnames. One that looked maybe related was: /Users/robbednark/Library//Accessibility/com.apple.RTTTranscripts.sqlite Nothing obviously transcription-related in those table names either, and grep -r PATTERN ~/Library/Accessibility completed without any matches.

$ sqlite3 -readonly ~/Library/Accessibility/com.apple.RTTTranscripts.sqlite .tables
ACHANGE                         ANSCKRECORDMETADATA
ANSCKDATABASEMETADATA           ANSCKRECORDZONEMETADATA
ANSCKEVENT                      ANSCKRECORDZONEMOVERECEIPT
ANSCKEXPORTEDOBJECT             ANSCKRECORDZONEQUERY
ANSCKEXPORTMETADATA             ATRANSACTION
ANSCKEXPORTOPERATION            ATRANSACTIONSTRING
ANSCKHISTORYANALYZERSTATE       ZTTYCONTACTLIST
ANSCKIMPORTOPERATION            ZTTYHISTORY
ANSCKIMPORTPENDINGRELATIONSHIP  Z_METADATA
ANSCKMETADATAENTRY              Z_MODELCACHE
ANSCKMIRROREDRELATIONSHIP       Z_PRIMARYKEY

I have an iPhone 8+ and use the Windows version of iTunes. There are all these songs my son purchased thru iTunes showing up on my iPhone. How do I get these listings off my iPhone? Note: The songs are not physically on the iPhone, but listed as downloadable. I don't want them listed at all.

I have deleted a folder on my iPhone and removed the containing apps from homescreen. Now they are only in the App Library after the last homescreen. I don’t know exactly what apps where in this folder. How can I check which apps are only in the App Library and not on the homescreen? Is there a Shortcuts that can create a list?

I hope someone can help. I'm trying to access my Appplications directory in Recovery Mode of my iMac with Terminal. I want to copy a folder to an external hard drive. After updating to Big Sur, my iMac won't start and so I need some files to save. The path I want to access is /Applications/MAMP/htdocs. When I type ls /Applications/MAMP: it says that there is no such file or directory. When I type ls /Applications: Safari.app and Utilities appear. When I type ls /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/users/"username"/Applications .localized appears. Is there another command I have to use? Is it even possible to get into the application folder? By the way: I already copied the whole Library folder... maybe it's possible to override the MAMP-files? Or do I need another backup of the htdocs-folder? Edit: This is the result of diskutil list internal

I have been browsing through my Mac user Library folder while trying to locate my FCPX assets and stumbled upon this folder (screenshot). It is named Vietnamese IM and the folder content seems like a shortcut to my user. FYI I am not Vietnamese, I do not speak Vietnamese and there's no chance I accidentally set my Mac to display in Vietnamese so this folder seems a little out of place and suspect. Can anyone explain please?

I'm inputting: cd /Library/Frameworks/Nebula.framework/Versions/4.0/bin;sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine lib*;sudo xattr -cr /Library/Audio/Presets/AcusticaAudio/Nebula4/Engines/1462306.vst and it's saying there's no such file even though I am looking at it. Is it because library is a hidden folder? If not, how can I fix this and remove quarantine? On M1 Sonoma.

I noticed this folder, ~/Library/Application Support/calls-and-messages, taking up almost 24GB (mostly in the Backup subfolder). It seems like it's being used almost every day, and it contains log files that seem to indicate that it's created by the OS, but I can't tell exactly what it's for and if it deserves that much disk space. Is it safe to just delete since it's so huge? Can I change the max size of the backup somewhere? I believe I was on the latest version of macOS 13 when I first found this. I have since updated to Sonoma. The only messaging related app I use, outside of Messages, is Zoom, although I haven't used it in a few days and the files in this folder are still getting updated. Directory listing:

Dia:calls-and-messages uncommon$ ls -l
total 6232
drwxr-xr-x@   4 uncommon  staff      128 Oct  3 09:40 Backup
drwx------@ 184 uncommon  staff     5888 Sep 29 20:18 Cache
drwx------@   5 uncommon  staff      160 Oct  3 09:40 Code Cache
-rw-------@   1 uncommon  staff    20480 Sep 29 20:18 Cookies
-rw-------@   1 uncommon  staff        0 Sep 29 20:18 Cookies-journal
drwx------@   7 uncommon  staff      224 Oct  3 09:40 Crashpad
-rw-------@   1 uncommon  staff  1048576 Oct  3 10:16 CrashpadMetrics-active.pma
-rw-------@   1 uncommon  staff  1048576 Sep 19 10:20 CrashpadMetrics.pma
drwx------@   2 uncommon  staff       64 Jul 30 22:01 Dictionaries
drwx------@   7 uncommon  staff      224 Jul 30 22:01 GPUCache
drwx------@   3 uncommon  staff       96 Jul 30 22:01 Local Storage
-rw-------@   1 uncommon  staff     1722 Oct  3 10:18 Network Persistent State
-rw-------@   1 uncommon  staff       41 Jul 30 22:01 Preferences
drwx------@   8 uncommon  staff      256 Sep 29 07:29 Session Storage
-rw-------@   1 uncommon  staff     1376 Oct  5 15:16 TransportSecurity
drwx------@   3 uncommon  staff       96 Oct  3 10:16 blob_storage
-rw-rw-rw-@   1 uncommon  staff    10989 Oct  5 15:15 config.json
drwxr-xr-x@   4 uncommon  staff      128 Oct  4 17:46 logs
drwxr-xr-x@   3 uncommon  staff       96 Jul 30 22:01 sentry

I'm currently creating a [raycast](https://raycast.com) extension for quickly opening recently opened Pages documents. Now, I have to find a way to access the documents and their pathnames. I tried following [this answer](https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/421589/506616) and stumbled across ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iWork.Pages/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork.Pages.plist. This plist file contains a key named TSARecentOpenedDocumentTimestamps which corresponds to an array of timestamps of when I opened pages documents. However, when using Xcode's built inplist search tool, I could not find any arrays of recently opened file paths or names. I also tried renaming the file to com.apple.iWork.Pages.old.plist and then quit and reopened pages. After it opened, I was faced with the "welcome to pages" screen, like when I first opened it after getting my MacBook. However, I tried going to file -> open recent in the menu bar and found that my recently opened file names were still there, but greyed out. Therefore, the recently opened files could not have been stored in that plist. A raycast extension exists for opening recently opened Visual Studio Code projects, so I forked the code to see how. It reads from a database located at ~/Library/Application Support/Code/User/globalStorage/state.vscdb with the following SQL query SELECT json_extract(value, '$.entries') as entries FROM ItemTable WHERE key = 'history.recentlyOpenedPathsList'. However, while trying to find a similar file for pages, I noticed that it does not even have a folder in ~/Library/Application Support with its data. I have absolutely no idea where Pages could store this data, and without knowing where, I can't build this extension. So does anyone know where this data is stored? Thanks in advance!

For reasons (Time Machine sparsebundle broke itself irrevocably when I actually needed to restore...) I need to **manually copy the contents of ~/Library** from a manual backup, to an existing user directory on Monterey. I'm copying everything except Application Support. When I do this using Copy Exactly in Finder on Ventura... - ...the owner of the items seems correct (uid 501) - ...Finder will show the "denied" symbol over the folders (my account name and uid are identical in Ventura and Mojave). - ...logging in with the user in Mojave shows dozens of "need to repair your Library" password prompts, and all account specifics have been reset (settings, etc.) These "repairs" did nothing from my perspective. Obviously permissions aren't correct despite trying to preserve everything as much as possible. The initial backup was copied like this: Source (APFS) → "Exactly" to HFS+ → cp -a to Btrfs (in Ubuntu 23.04) The reverse process is used when restoring. Did I lose ACLs in that process, or what could the problem be? **Can it be fixed?** ----------- As mentioned, I would've restored from Time Machine if it hadn't failed the ultimate test of reliability by destroying its own file system during a restore and then fsck putting the final nail in the coffin by saying it can't be repaired.

I used the following commands to give myself access to the .config folder in order to access Google Chrome's internal files. sudo chown user ~user/.config chmod 711 ~user/.config That did not give me access to the .config folder, but it gave me access to the Library folder. I am not sure what the relationship between those two folders is, but that's where the Chrome files ended up being located. Having access to the Library folder is now interfering with my work, because lots of unneeded files are turning up in Finder searches now, and I would like to reverse those commands. My username on MacOS is user (I realize it's probably not the best practice), and that account is also the machine's admin. How do I reverse both ownership and chmod modifications made earlier?

Within Photos, how to **move** a set of photos from one album to another one to change my library organization, **without duplicating** their names? Like you can move a file within the filesystem from one folder to another without creating a new name for it ( which can be achieved with symbolic links ). My photo library is pretty well organized as a tree of folders and within, each terminal folder a set of albums each with a meaningful name. Whenever a folder or album gets too large I create new sub-folders or albums and I would like to **move** albums and photos within this modified organization but without ever creating duplicate names. I don't want for any reason any duplicate name, and moreover I don't want any pair of names which are different and pointing in fact to the same photo: a **hidden duplicate name** ( folder_1/name_A → img4928.jpg and folder_2/name_B → img4928.jpg ). Such **hidden dupplicate names** would make a labyrinth, a mess of my photo library. I already tried many key combinations while dragging: ⇧+drag, ^+drag, ⌥+drag, ⌘+drag with no success. Why does this basic function seem to be hidden or… missing? The function of moving is much more useful in real life than the one of copying, when you want to maintain a huge data collection well organized. What I am looking for here is not an explanation of the internal functioning of Photos. I know it pretty well. For example when we **copy** a photo from album *A* to album *B*, internally there is no duplication of data, but just a duplication of name, both names pointing toward the same original photo.

I mistakenly updated a MBP to Catalina in 2021 and suffered with the few "silent but annoying" things Apple did to push iTunes/local library users to streaming (ie, you cannot drag songs around in the up next queue with local music, but magically can with streamed content) I recently acquired a different MBP with Mojave, and have copied my entire itunes folder to this new machine. However, my iTunes Library.iti and ITunes Music Library.xml files are back dated to 2021 and therefore none of the play counts and ratings I have made since then (on the Music app) have saved to the iti/xml files - but to "Music Library" file instead. Is there any way to use the Music Library file or Music application to refresh/update the data of those iTunes files?

I'm thinking about switching to new Mac with ARM in next months. I usually backup with TimeMachine my Mac. 3 years ago I moved from MacBook Air to MacBook Pro really smoothly using backup from TimeMachine. I'm now asking if it will be as easy as last time doing it from an x86 Mac to a ARM one. For example all binaries files in my mac will not work on the new one, are they copied anyway? I know that Rosetta exists and it can run x86 binaries, but I definitely prefer pure ARM install of software instead of have the Mac full of old binaries. Does Time Machine copy smartly the applications or I need to do it manually? Is there a way to copy only the data and not the executable files? Suppose that I have to transfer all the x86 executable files. Is there a script to clean the Mac from unnecessary files? This should be in another question, but since is quite related to what I'm talking about: how can I clean my Mac from old and uninstalled application data? My Library folder is full of files created by applications that I have uninstalled years ago (some of them were uninstalled on the old mac and Time Machine brought their data on the new Mac) and I want to clean up it; I guess that this problem affects also other folders. Thank you!

I've migrated my Mac probably from Tiger (maybe clean installed once in between), so the Mail folder structure is probably a bit messy. Nevertheless, I just got a new mac and migrated with Migration Assistant again and found my new Mac has much less space left than the previous one. Long story short, I ended up deleted quite a lot of mail attachment from ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail Downloads. According to my search, it should be safe to remove them (right?). 20GB space recovered. I've tried rebuild the mailbox with Download Attachment "None" selected and that 20GB was still untouched...Anyhow, a lot of time wasted. My question now is it seems there are similar sized V10 folders in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail AND ~/Library/Mail I see some posts online said the /Container is a sandbox and it's a link to other places, but is it normal to take similar amount of space? In my case, ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail took 51.5 GB (I deleted the 20GB Mail Downloads from here) ~/Library/Mail took 81.8 GB The structures are not exactly the same but some folder names in V10 (they both have V10) are exactly the same. Is it normal for Mac Mail to use double the disk space? Or it's the migration left over? If it is normal, any other mail client can perform as-good search feature and take much less space? If it's not normal, what might be the best course of action to keep the Mail disk usage under control? If I can confirm it's not normal, I'll be happy to remove all accounts (and remove all the mails/attachment, don't know how atm though) then redownload them from the IMAP/Exchange servers. I "think" they are still all kept on the servers. BTW, the Apple chat and phone support is useless in my experiences... Thanks!

I'd like to back up my local content with my own scripts, but I'm not familiar with how macOS apps work. For example, I can't find where Ulysses stores its local content. Or more generally: where do macOS apps usually store their files?

I am new to macOS and a big fan of Emacs. I am trying to achieve *Emacs keybindings everywhere*. Despite the fact that I have read multiple times on the web people stating that macOS was friendly and out of the box with Emacs keybindings, I am having some hassles. Obviously, the problems happen outside of Emacs. **In Emacs, things work as expected.** I am struggling with copy, paste, cut, for instance. But I also used to have problems with those in Linux (Ubuntu/NixOs). Unlike in macOS, in Linux I managed to get M-b (move back word) and M-f (move forward) to work. It is possible to do it with Command-M-b and Command-M-f but I do not want to change my habbit/muscle memory. I want to make this new computer adapt to me - not the opposite. Some old posts (like #1 , #2 , #3 , #4 ) mention a tweak on ~/Library/KeyBindings/. By the way, a lot of posts are mentioning Jacob Rus' comprehensive guide which is hosted on Harvard University domain.... But the link is broken. Unfortunately, I cannot even find this folder: Pedros-MacBook-Air:Library pedro$ pwd /Users/pedro/Library Pedros-MacBook-Air:Library pedro$ cd Key Keyboard/ Keyboard Layouts/ KeyboardServices/ Keychains/ How to find ~/Library/KeyBindings/ in Mac M1 Monterey 12.5? Should I create it? Also, others posting more recent content are suggesting other alternatives, such as Karabiner-elements (#1 #2 ). Karabiner-elements can also be useful for short keys to launch applications. What is the best technical practice to change keybindings in macOS? What are the technical arguments around every solution?

I am trying to add music from a laptop running MacOS 12.4 to an iPhone 7 running 15.5. When I try to do this no matter which options I select, I get a message saying that syncing the two devices will replace media on another library, I guess because I can only sync with one computer at a time? (I already synced another iPhone.) Is there a way around this?

I'm trying to modify /System/Library/ScriptingDefinitions/CocoaStandard.sdef. I want to do this because a lot of applications reference this file in their own scripting definitions, and I want to experiment with adding new stuff that will take effect in every application. Since scripting definition entries map directly to Cocoa objects and their methods, I figure this would be an effective way to mess with other applications' objects. I rebooted to Recovery OS and ran the following commands in a terminal: csrutil disable umount "/Volumes/Macintosh HD" mkdir /Volumes/mhd mount /dev/disk3s1 /Volumes/mhd cd /Volumes/mhd/System/Library/ScriptingDefinitions mv CocoaStandard.sdef CocoaStandard.sdef.original ln -s /Library/ScriptingDefinitions/CocoaStandard.sdef . reboot Note that I have already placed a copy of CocoaStandard.sdef in /Library/ScriptingDefinitions. The problem I'm running into is that, despite disabling System Integrity Protection, once I reboot into macOS, the changes I made in /System/Library/ScriptingDefinitions have somehow been reverted. There is no CocoaStandard.sdef.original, and CocoaStandard.sdef is once again a regular file rather than a symbolic link. How do I stop these changes from being reverted? Alternatively, if there is a better way to add custom scripting definitions to existing applications, that would work as well. (I tried directly adding entries to the .sdef inside a copy of the application, but then whenever I try to control that copy of the application using AppleScript, I get error -1728.)