I've been digging around in the kernel code repo for days, but I just can't find this anywhere.
I want to disable/enable/detect the state of the ambient-light sensor based screen dimming that many of the higher end Mac laptops have. This is the dimming that is activated by the "Automatically Adjust Brightness" checkbox in the Display control panel.
Note that I'm NOT talking about the halfdim setting that causes the screen to dramatically dim right before it sleeps. I'm talking about the setting that dims the screen in dark rooms and brightens it in light rooms, which is different.
If anybody can even point me in the right direction I'd be greatfull. I assume it's handled somewhere in IOKit, probably either IOGraphics where screen brightness is handled, or somewhere in IOKit/pwr_mgt, but I just can't find it.
Thanks
Edit: I know you can kind of do this this by addressing System Preferences with AppleScript. I'm looking for the real way, if it exists.
This isn't an API, per sé.. but there are many ways to control launchd via an API.
sudo launchctl stop com.apple.AmbientDisplayAgent
sudo launchctl remove com.apple.AmbientDisplayAgent
Ta Da!
Trying to do this on Mavericks was unsuccessful for me. After some research I've discovered you need to use the following command:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.iokit.AmbientLightSensor "Automatic Display Enabled" -bool TRUE
I believe specifying the full path is necessary else it would default to the user's Library/Preferences which is incorrect. Being in that directory in Terminal doesn't work either due to the way defaults works.
This does not update the tickbox in System Preferences -> Displays though.
Change the "Automatically Adjust Brightness" setting using the defaults command:
defaults write com.apple.BezelServices dAuto -boolean false
Also retrieve the current setting using the defaults command:
defaults read com.apple.BezelServices dAuto
AppleScript equivalent:
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.BezelServices dAuto -boolean false"
Use true to enable and false to disable the feature.
You might need to logon again for the changes to take effect.
Posting this as it might help someone who like me had already disabled the ambient light sensing but still found their computer was dimming when waking from sleep. Turns out I also needed uncheck the box to "Slightly dim the display while on battery power"
System Preferences > Battery > Slightly dim the display while on battery power
See the image below:
Related
as the title indicates I need help with the on-screen keyboard properties.
I have to configure a script, which I will deploy through SCCM in 30 terminals, and I need to make the keyboard go on screen as soon as I start the pc.
I have already solved this by adding this key to the registry
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run Clavier_Visuel = "C:\Windows\System32\osk.exe"
The problem is that I can't find a place to set the parameters of the keyboard: Remove the X to close it, display the PAD number, set the language to French and make it fit the screen.
This can be done manually, but that's not the goal.
Another point is that different users will be logged into the computers, so I can't set the condition to single user, but it should be general for all.
If you can help me it would be great, since I have not found anything useful so far, a greeting!
Hello all,
Can anyone tell me how to clear the 'Recent items' list in Preview application of Mac OS X through code? Is there a terminal command that can do this?
Or is there any way to click on 'Clear Menu' in 'Open Recent' of the 'File' menu in Preview?
Alternatively, does someone know where Preview stores this information and how do to remove it?
Check out this image to see what I mean.
Ok, so none of the described methods on the websites I could find actually succeeded in getting rid of all the 'recent document' lists in all of my apps.
I feel the most common sense approach would be (for OSX 10.12 / Sierra):
First go to system settings > general and choose "none" in the recent file dropdown menu (my OSX is in another language so the exact terms might be different, but you should be able to see what I mean). / This will get rid of most, but not all recent-items in different apps.
Get familiar with Apple's 'defaults' command in terminal. Now, hunt for any lists you might still want to get rid off, e.g. none of the options mentioned in the answers already listed here helped to get rid of the recent-items list in Finders "GO" menu. I played around with the defaults command and found that: "write com.apple.finder "FXRecentFolders" '({})' && killall Finder" does the trick for me. Playing around I found similar solutions for many of the other apps that where still able to maintain a list of recent items.
Create a shell script containing the commands you found during step 2.
Schedule the script to be run automatically on a preset interval or action (e.g. log out). AND/OR create an alias in your shell's profile (or directly apply the script as a function inside it) so you can call it with a single command from your terminal. (for instance: I have created an alias to it, so when I now type "killrecent" in terminal, it empties all the recent-items lists I've been able to find.
Hope this will be of some help to others. Good luck!
open Preview ->- go to File ->- Open Recent ->- Clear Menu
You may try the approach outlined here, which is to run
defaults delete com.apple.Preview.LSSharedFileList RecentDocuments
in the Terminal (manually or through your app). However I tried this and it didn't work for me (OSX 10.11), since the Preview defaults file doesn't contain this entry.
You can use
defaults write com.apple.Preview NSRecentDocumentsLimit 0
which will hide all recently used items, but as soon as you set that number to anything greater than 0, they will show up again.
I also checked the ScriptingBridge Interface for Preview, but couldn't find anything useful. So unfortunately it looks like this is not possible.
with 10.11, there are at
~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.sharedfilelist/com.apple.LSSharedFileList.ApplicationRecentDocuments/com.apple.preview.sfl
One of my programs seems to be changing the Display Properties > Appearance > Effects > Show window contents while dragging setting to off every few hours.
I'm not sure exactly which program, or when it happens. I have a number of programs that seem like likely culprits - wallpaper rotators, software for multiple monitors, multiple virual desktops and switching, and a few others.
I am just thinking to create a little batch script to run periodically and set the setting back to on.
Does anyone know how to do this in windows? I'm using xp pro sp3.
Thanks!
The best option is to do this programmatically using the supported API. i haven't tested this, but it should do the trick:
SystemParametersInfo(SPI_SETDRAGFULLWINDOWS,
TRUE,
NULL,
SPIF_UPDATEINIFILE | SPIF_SENDCHANGE)
You can use SPI_GETDRAGFULLWINDOWS to see if the the bit has been flipped to avoid unnecessarily triggering a WM_SETTINGCHANGE.
You can use RegMon to find the program that keeps changing your settings. Maybe that's a better start than hacking around it.
There is a simple and effective solution to this problem. In Notepad type the following lines :
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] "DragFullWindows"="1"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VisualEffects\DragFullWindows] "CheckedValue"=dword:00000001 "UncheckedValue"=dword:00000001
Save the file as "Show Window Contents.reg" Double clicking this file and restarting will cure the problem permanently. Post a message if you find this useful.
Aravind Banerjee
It seems the registry setting which controls that preference is HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\DragFullWindows. You can read more about it here. However, trying it on my own computer does not register the change right away, so a batch script won't do it. You'll probably have to write a program to manipulate it using SystemParametersInfo(). You can pass it the SPI_SETDRAGFULLWINDOWS parameter. Here's a page explaining it more. Here's a page showing how to call it, albeit not for the same parameter.
I suspect it's kept in the registry - maybe [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] - "DragFullWindows"?
It would be easy to flip the registry setting back to "1" every hour or so with a batch file.
How can I make the tootip/flyover of the tabs appear faster? There is too much reaction time, it takes ages to look through many of them.
I have most of the time 100 tabs open in Firefox (I am using the tab mix plus addon - "tmp").
To see what's in the different browser windows I do not activate them, but I just move the mouse over the tabs.
After some milliseconds a tooltip/flyover appears (a little box at the mouse pointer is drawn above everything below) and it contains information from the header of the web page that belongs to the tab. But there is a pause of some milliseconds before they are shown.
If there is not a specific about:config variable I would also be interested how to change firefox code (as I assume this is not built into tmp, I didn't find it in the options)
I do not use the tmp feature "select tab by pointing after xxx ms", which could probably interfere.
Thank You
Karl
It may not really be a system wide problem as some others are claiming. For my website, I noticed that tooltip delay in Firefox was much higher than in Chrome. So I researched a bit, and fortunately it's easy to fix.
Just open your about:config in Firefox, and right click, New->Integer value. Give this name to the preference:
ui.tooltipDelay
Give it the value you like, I've just set that to 100 and it works nice now (Their default value is 500).
Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Preferences/Preference_reference/ui.tooltipDelay
The tooltip delay variable isn't in Firefox's about:config because it is a system-wide variable.
If you are using OS X you can change it using these commands in terminal:
// make the change global (applies to all apps)
defaults write -g NSInitialToolTipDelay -int 500
// just for firefox
defaults write org.mozilla.firefox NSInitialToolTipDelay -int 500
I don't know how this can be done under windows. (maybe a registry key or something
EDIT: I just found this / wikipedia. Maybe you can give it a try?
I believe that Tweak UI from Microsoft PowerToys has a setting to change this on Windows. Look for the download on the right of the page about halfway down.
From the Displays pane in System Preferences, I can manually change the main monitor by dragging the menu bar from one display to the other. I'd like to automate this and make it part of an AppleScript.
The tool I wrote, displayplacer, does this.
Configure your screens how you like, drag the "white bar" to your primary screen in the macOS system settings, and then execute displayplacer list. It will output the command to run to put your screens in their current configuration. The screen with origin:(0,0) is the main display with the "white bar". Run this terminal command through a script, Automator, BetterTouchTool, etc.
Example profile 1 puts the white bar on the menu bar on the left monitor.
displayplacer "id:<leftScreenId> res:1920x1080 scaling:on origin:(0,0) degree:0" "id:<rightScreenId> res:1920x1080 scaling:on origin:(1920,0) degree:0"
Example profile 1 puts the white bar on the menu bar on the right monitor.
displayplacer "id:<leftScreenId> res:1920x1080 scaling:on origin:(1920,0) degree:0" "id:<rightScreenId> res:1920x1080 scaling:on origin:(0,0) degree:0"
Also available via Homebrew brew tap jakehilborn/jakehilborn && brew install displayplacer
The displays are controlled by the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist preference file:
A flag controls whether the main display is the onboard screen the DisplayMainOnInternal key.
The DisplaySets key contains the list of the display sets. The first set is the one used (fact to check).
In the set, each item contains the screen properties. The IOFlags key seems to indicate if the display is the main one (value of 7) or not (value of 3).
Before going Apple Script, you may change the display configuration by hand, and save a copy of the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist file to study it.
Note that the following procedure has not been tested !!!
With AppleScript, the keys in the plist file are changed individually, in order to change the main display:
Make a backup of the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist (in case of)
Alter the display set the select the main display (DisplaySets and IOFlags keys) by using the defaults command
Restart the Window Server: killall -KILL SystemUIServer
You should see if you can do it via AppleScript's User Interface Scripting. It allows you to manipulate an application's GUI elements; useful when the app doesn't support scripting directly. I'd test it myself but I don't have any extra displays lying around.
Here's a pretty good overview by MacTech.
Much like you can tell System Events.app to sleep your Mac, you can tell Image Events.app to mess with your displays. The Image Events application provides a "displays" collection. Each display has a "profile" with lots of goodies. However, everything I just mentioned is read-only, so I don't have a good way to do it from within script.
You might have better luck in Automator – Hit record, run System Preferences, go to Displays, drag the menu bar to the other screen, and hit stop. I bet something will work.
Using AppleScript, you can invoke default to write the setting to change the main monitor.