Fix the "ls: Operation Not Permitted" Error on Mac

Recently, I encountered an issue when trying to execute the ls command in Terminal. This is a commonly used command to display the contents—files and directories—within a specific path. I need to know what's there before I do anything.

ls Error

MyMac-MBP13:~ auser$ ls
Applications			Untitled.html
Desktop				downloadtemp
Documents			iCloud Drive (Archive)
Downloads			iCloud Drive (Archive) - 1
Library				iCloud Drive (Archive) - 2
Movies				test
Music				test.aiff
Pictures			test.html
Programming			tmp
Public				vc.swift
Sites
MyMac-MBP13:~ auser$ cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/
MyMac-MBP13:MobileSync auser$ ls
 ls: .: Operation not permitted 
MyMac-MBP13:MobileSync auser$ 

After searching online, I discovered that this issue is due to a security enhancement introduced by Apple in the latest macOS: System Integrity Protection (SIP). By default, the Terminal app does not have the privilege of Full Disk Access. My current macOS version is Sequoia 15.3.2.

Change System Settings

According to a solution on the CleanMyMac blog titled “How to fix the ‘ls: .: operation not permitted’ error in Terminal,” I needed to adjust a setting in System Settings.

Initially, when I navigated to Privacy & Security, I couldn’t find the Full Disk Access option.

I wasn’t sure where the setting was—until I tried searching for “Full Disk.”

I turned it on.

The hidden setting was revealed. As expected, Terminal did not have Full Disk Access by default. I enabled it by entering my admin password. Now, the ls command works anywhere in the console, after re-opended.

MyMac-MBP13:Application Support auser$ ls Mob*
 Backup 
MyMac-MBP13:Application Support auser$ 

Revert the Setting (Optional)

I believe Apple’s SIP is a great safety feature. After finishing my work in Terminal, I turned off Full Disk Access for the Terminal app to restore the default setting. I’m writing this blog post for future reference, in case I need to do similar work in Terminal again.

References

• CleanMyMac blog: How to fix the "ls operation not permitted error"

Other Blogs

• Next: Backup iPhone to External Drive
• Prev: Process Behind Spotlight

Link to a note in Notes.app

Notes.app is a very good app in Apple eco-system. You can add a note on Mac or iPhone or iCloud. Then all the notes are synced in iCloud if you enable notes on iCloud.

There is a problem to access to a note, especially when you have hundreds or thousands of notes. It is really hard to find out an interested note.

I developed an app: TapToCount-3W. This is a convenient and creative tool to write notes anywhere when you have an iPhone. By categories you define, it is very easy to organize your taps or notes. With a finger tapping on screen, you can create a tap with 3 pieces information: When, Where and What. "What" is a note associated to a tap.

Normally, I don't like to write a lot of text in my app's note. It is much better to use Notes.app or EverNote to write a note. Then, a question comes to my mind. Can I have a URL link in a note, and then I copy/paste the link to my app.

Yes, it is possible. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Click or tap a note's Add People icon
2. Enter an email, it can be just you!
3. Then a link is available in Sharing. I could not find Copy Link in iPhone, but it is in Mac.

In this way, I can have a link in my app.





From this story, I think that any shared resources in Apple devices should have a link or URL available for accessing.

References

• Stack Exchange - Ask Difference(Answers for your Apple questions): How to connection note with links in Notes.app?
• iOS app: TapToCount-3W

Live YouTube with OBS

I recently got a request from a group of my friends to do a live streaming on YouTube. I did this long time before on my Mac. I thought that it should be easy, even though I still decided to do preparation one week ahead of time. I could not get it to work at start. I have spent several days struggling to figure out how to stream video and audio to YouTube. Finally, I got it work. Here I would like to make some notes on this experience.

What I need for Live Streaming

YouTube raised bar to do live streaming for mobile devices, at least 1,000 subscribes for the time being (Dec 10, 2019). I have to do it with software on my Mac. Here is the list I have to set up:

• Live streaming software: OBS (Open Broadcaster Software);
• Web camera as movable camera to shoot: EpocCam for iPhone to shoot, and EpocCam View on Mac to receive video from EpocCam on iPhone;
• External microphone for audio recording.

and of course, YouTube account is requested to do live streaming. Another thing is that Chrome is required to run Live YouTube, since Safari does not support some features by Live Y.

iPhone as Web Camera

EpocCam iPhone Webcam Viewer is a Mac app, which can be obtained from App Store. On iPhone side, you can also get EpocCam iOS app. In order for Mac to get video source, run the iOS app first, and then run the Mac app on my Mac computer. Both should be on the same network. This is very easy and straightforward step up.

OBS Configuration for Video Source

OBS installation is very easy as well. For Catalina OS, you may experience some issue to run the installation package since it is not from from App Store. Open System Preferences | Security & Privacy, and you will see in General tab that installation... for permission.

Catalina OS has more security features, thereafter, capturing screen/windows, and accessing to a mic have to be permitted by user.

The first difficulty is to get video source for OBS streaming. After one or two days's investigation I eventually found a way to get video source: window capturing. This can be set by adding video source from source panel:



EpocCam running window can be found in window list:

OBS Configuration for Audio Source

The most difficult one is to configure audio source. Before set it up, the following app should be installed first:

iShowU Audio Capture

Basically, this app is used to install a driver as extension to OS X so that it can used as a way to capture audio on Mac computer. The installation process requires to give permission from System Preferences | Security & Privacy.

The next step is to set up audio output device by running Mac utility app: Audio MIDI Setup. Add a new Multi-output Device from left panel:



above is the case of Multi-Output Device with iShowU Audio Capture and Built-in Output checked.

Remember: each time start a live OBS streaming, make sure this Multi-Output Device is selected as output device either from System Preferences | Sound Output tab, from top right Speaker icon:



or

The final and very important step is to start OBS from Terminal with the following command(audio capture would not work if launching OBS directly from Applications!):

open /Applications/OBS.app/Contents/MacOS/OBS --args -picture

When you first time to run this command from Terminal, you will get permission prompt to let this shell to access mic. I think that access to microphone is done by running OBS with argument settings from Terminal. You can verify it by looking at Audio Mixer penal on OBS window's bottom.

Don't close Terminal during live streaming period!

This is my OBS settings for Audio:



The above are all my findings after several days and long hours struggling. I am very happy to get all the issues resolved.

I wrote this blog for my future reference and hope it may help you with similar difficulties.

References

• OBS web site
• Kinoni provider for web camera apps: EpocCam apps (iOS and macOS)
• YouTube tutorial: Learn OBS in 30 minutes
• YouTube solution show on OBS: OBS Sound problem solution (Catalina)
• OBS support QA: macOS 10.15 Catalina Support Status (this article provides script to open OBS in terminal)
• Mac app: iShowU Audio Capture app

Reinstall iWork 09

I purchased iWork more than 2 years ago. I still have the original box and CD. However, I could not find its serial number. The reason I need SN is that I could not use iWork on my two MacBook Pros. Today I got the issue resolve. Actually, I don't need SN since I have to original box and CD.

Here is the background story. My daughter has used those two MacBook Pros. I think that she may installed iWork trial version from web. The trial version has only 30 day limit. After the limit, it requires SN to activate. Now I take my daughter's old MacBook Pro for my personal use. I gave her another one last year. Since she used both and she used Time Machine to restore her account, both have the same issue: SN for iWork activation.

Today, I spent some time to investigate and I got it resolved. What I need is to remove the iWork from Applications folder first. I have to remove its library folder from /Library/Applicaction Support. There is are two iWorks folders there, one for 08 and one for 09. The 09 folder should be removed.

After cleanup of the iWork, I inserted CD and installed it. There is no requirement for SN. After installation, the iWork works fine. There is option to update iWork when either Numbers or Pages is launched first time. I found this update is not from Apple's software update.

By the way, iWork 09 is good for up to 5 personal computers, according to Apple's information from web. I have not tried it over 5 yet. I doubt if can install it over more than 5. I have another 3 MacBook laptops (one MacBook, two MacBook Air) I sent to my relatives. I am going to visit them in my coming vacation. I will verify if they still have iWork or not. I'll try to install it if they don't have or they have same SN requirement issue.

iPhoto and Photo Book

It is Christmas holiday season and close to year end of 2012. It is time to share gifts with family members and best of friends. I have used my iOS devices in the past years to take many photos. Those photos bring wonderful memory of our past. I decided to use iPhoto app to create photo books as Christmas and New Year gifts. I think this is a great idea and it will be a big surprise for people who will receive my photo books.

It is very easy to create a photo book. Here are some of my experiences.

Context Driven Process

I only started to use iPhoto to create books three weeks ago. Therefore, my limited experience may not explore all the features of how to create photo books. I must miss something I don't know. However, it is very easy to create a photo book in iPhoto app. There is Create button on the bottom right side in most cases. From there Book is one of options.

Depending on where you are, the book will bring in photos depending on the context. For example, if you open an event from Events in Library, the photos in this even will be placed in pages in your new book. If you open a person from Faces, the book will initialize pages based on photos for this person.

iPhoto's book comes with many different templates, and those templates make book design much easy. You have to open a page to change page layout from a list of choices such one photo, two photos and so on; however, there is a limitation to change page layout design. For example, you cannot change photo page size, delete text box or change text box size.

Choose Photo from Events

Most likely, you will want to choose photos from different events. To do that, you have to select an event first, then go back to your book to select photos from that event. This is a very tedious process if you have a lots of photos, such as thousands of photos across hundreds of events. There is no way to create a collection of photos as a template place. Another enhancement would be nice if search photo by key words/tags assigned to photo is available.

Output Options

There are many options you can output the book into different formats, such as web pages, JEG photos, slide movie, PDF book and physical book from Apple print shop. I think the last three options are the most popular ones.

To create slideshow movie, it can be done by Export from File menu. To generate PDF, you can choose Print or press Command + P keys.

As Christmas gift, I choose Buy Book in iPhoto. I notice one problem when I buy a book. If you use iPhoto to edit your book for some period of time, you may get crash when you buy your book. It is quite annoying after you go through steps to type in mailing address and credit information. Fortunately, you would not get charged if you fail to submit your request.

To avoid this problem, quit iPhoto if you edit your book. Re-open it just for Buy Book. This will be very smooth process without any trouble.

Another critical tip to create book should be done always if your photos are not processed or optimized.   In the final step, go through all your photos and use the Enhance feature to get enhanced photo quality from Photo Edit.

The first book I submitted was on Sunday. The next day I got an email notification about my order. The third day I got a notification about shipment and on Thursday I received my order. The package is very nice packaged with Apple logo. The print quality is well done, almost as same as I see from my iMac screen.

After my first success try, I designed two more books for my best friends. The books are on the way to my friend's homes. They will be very surprised to receive my Christmas gifts. I think that those colorful and wonderful photos will be best gifts for them. They will remember this gift for long time.

App from App Store on multiple Macs

Today I tried to purchase iLife 11 on my iMac 27. Actually I purchased this item about one month ago when I was on my iMac 24. On the web, some people say that you can install an app from App Store on more than one machines. I was not sure it is true. I tried to get it on my iMac 27 about 1 week time later after my initial purchase. I got a warning message saying to Buy app. I stopped there to avoid double charge.



I talked to Apple tech person when I was picking up my repaired iMac 24. I told him that I had purchased iLife11 from App Store and asked him if I could get it back. He told me that, if I cannot find it from my TM, I should be able to repurchase it from Apple Store without any charge.

"You can install the app up to 5 machines. If you get charge, just phone iTunes support line", he said with confidence. This is confirmation, at least from Apple people.

Today I went to App Store again on my iMac 27. After I pressed "Buy" button, I saw this message:



I am really happy with the App Store. It is a great news for Mac users.

New Icon: I Love Apple

I have created a new icon for my blog: I Love My Apple. This icon is based on Mac symbol fonts. Here are the steps how I did this creation.

Find Symbols from Font Book

Font Book is a utility application that comes with Mac OS for viewing and managing fonts. In Mac OS, fonts can be organized by collections. Within Font Book, all symbol fonts are within Symbols collection (if you download new fonts, those fonts may not be in Symbols collection, but you can easily move them there).


Font Book provides only samples for view. It does not have the complete view of all characters.

Enter Symbols in a Document
I used NeoOffice to edit my doc. If I can find any symbols from the Font Book, I'll copy and paste them to my doc. Since FB does not display all the characters by fonts, I have to find symbols if they are not visible in FB.

In most document editors, there is way to insert character from menu Insert|Special Character... to get a window for selecting special character.

Notice that a unicode is displayed when a char is selected. This is very helpful if you know the unicode from a font. There are many free Mac fonts available and they may have complete symbols with unicodes.

For my icon purpose, I used several symbol fonts. Here is a list of fonts:

• I: TackODing
• Love: VTMeiOrnamentsOnBlack
• Apple: Mac Dingbats

Here is the doc with several examples. The first girl is from font Chickabiddies, the second carton from TackODing, and third lady from TackODing.



Take Screen Shortcut

Finally, I take a screen shortcut to capture interest area as a png picture. It is very easy to do in Mac: use the screen shortcut key command+shift+4 to select an area. The result will be a png picture on my Desktop.

I always use Yahoo's SmushIt web service to further reduce the size of the picture. This compress will save about 10-30% in size without any quality difference in visual mode.

By the way, there are many additional fonts are available on web. Here is a web for Mac fonts.

Mac Apps: Glims Plug in for Safari and TimeMachineEditor

I found two great and long waiting Mac applications. One is a plugin for Safari to load previous tabs on start: Glims. Safari, unlike Chrome or FireFox, does not restore the previous tabs on start. I have tried to figure out a way to do that for long time. Now Glims does what I want.

The second one is to add TimeMachine backup intervals. By default, the TimeMachine does backups at about one hour interval and there is no configuration to change it. This frequent backups are not suitable for MacBook Air. I would like to schedule backup in a daily base. I think I found this app information from Mac Geek Gab podcast 300. This was an around table talk with several geeks. During the talk, each one mentioned his favourite apps. TimeMachineEditor got my immediate attention.

I really like this tool. Basically, it is a UI tool for backup schedule. In order to do the backup in the schedule way, the TimeMachine has to be turned off. I think that TimeMachineEditor is a script based app. It generates a script to schedule TM job.


Today I verified that my TM did have a backup as scheduled:

Mac App for MacBook Battery: coconutBattery

Battery usage hours and battery life are critical specs for laptop computers. Based on the information from Apple, my new MacBook Air 13" is supposed to have 7 hour usage. I am going to test out how good the battery is. One way to test it is to use it and keep eye on its battery hours. Another way is to use application to monitor and record battery hours.

I found one free Mac app related to Battery specs. It is coconutBattery. Here is the current status of my battery:


However, it does actually provide information about my MacBook usage history, such as when is the last charge time, and how many hours are in sleep mode and active mode since the last charge. It may be a good case for a Mac app.

The Mac OS does provide a tool to show the battery status. It is an icon on the right top side the system menu bar. It provides different way to show batter status such as time left, and access to Energy Save Preference.


Yesterday I noticed from this icon that my battery reached to a very low point. Then it displayed a warning message saying that my MacBook Air would be in sleep mode in a few minutes:


I waited for the moment. In a few of minutes, my computer went to a black screen. There was no respond for any key pressed. After that, I plugged in my power and the screen came back. It was very nice experience. I think the battery status icon does provide accurate status. This provides me a chance to save my data and turn off my computer if no power is available.

Free App: EasyFind

I found a great tool for finding files, EasyFinder by DEVONTechnologies. This is a supplementary tool for Mac Finder. I could not find figure out a way to find a file by matching file patterns. EasyFinder provides a nice UI with a lots of features in addition to what I need.

The UI is a Finder like window. To search for files, for example "black friday", type in the word in search box, and click on Find button on the right. The result will be displayed in the main area with detail information by columns. The UI supports quick view, open, reveal in Finder, and delete.


Be careful with delete, there is no warning for delete. By default, the deleted file will be in Trash. Unfortunately, if the deleted file in a long path somewhere hard to remember, you cannot restore it back from Trash. The restore feature is a long demanded feature from Mac users. Therefore, I removed the Delete button from toolbar and add Info instead:


I found out that Control+C copies file names with whole path if one or more files are selected. This may be a way or good habit to take a note of files before you delete any files.

Zip Quick Look

By the default, iMac does not display the content of a zip file when you use Quick Look to view it(select a file and then press space key). I found a tool to do the job, called as Zip Quick Look PlugIn.

To install it, download Zip.qlgenerator.zip first. Unzip the file. Copy or drag the Zip.generator to /Library/QuickLook/, make a QuickLook folder if you don't have one.

Then restart the Finder. Here I learned a new tip to restart Finder:

• locate the Finder in Dock,
• press Ctrl+Opt+click or Opt+right click;
• you will see a list of context menu, and select Relaunch.

It will relaunch Finder. Now you should be able to view the content of a zip file.

Adobe CS 3

It is very time consuming to install Adobe CS 3. I tried to help my daughter to install it today. It took me about 4 hours to install it. Actually, this 4 hours include sometime to reinstall previously installed trial version.

She has to install the trial version since she needed it for her class and her teach told them so. That's OK to get some trial versions first. However, when she received the licensed package, She tried to install it. It did not give any warning about trial versions installed already, but Illustrator and PhotoShop would not been installed. Her classmate told her that the trials have to be completely uninstalled before the licensed one. I don't understand why the installation process does not say that.

My daughter does not sure what have been installed and she is too busy with her home projects. I took the installation over. I browsed information about the installation issues on web. There are some conversations on this issue. Some warn that dragging Adobe applications to Trash would not completely uninstall them, and it would leave some components which would be hardly removed out.

Then I tried to install all the trials first. Some I had to download again. After the trials installed, I uninstalled them. There is only one component, Adobe Premiere Pro CS Functional Content, could not been removed. I could not find any way to do that. Finally, I started to install the licensed version. This time, except the Premiere one, all the other applications are available for installation. After the installation, it looks like that all the packages she needs are there.

That's very painfully process. I would recommend to keep the trial versions on DVD in case you want to remove them later. This could save you some time to download again, you have a list what have been installed.