iOS: Export/back up all local and cloud contacts natively

No dearth of contacts backup apps in the App Store, though not one is required for exporting/backing up all local and cloud contacts to vCard:

1. In Contacts List view, tap and hold All Contacts
2. Tap Export
3. Tap Select All Fields
4. Tap checkmark at top right
5. Tap desired destination from Share menu (AirDrop, Mail, Messages, Save to Files, etc.)

See also Delete all iOS contacts.

❧ 2026-04-14

Crop PDFs in browser or portable app

Wuqiong Zhao's pdfcrop Web App is sublimely fit to purpose. Tried wrangling a Tauri-based portable Windows app out of it with Claude 4.6 Opus, Gemini 3.1 Pro, and GPT 5.4 over several hours with little to show for it.

Dear friend and AI whisperer Josh adroitly conjured up a wonderful solution using Copilot & GPT-5.4-high in a twinkling, even fixing crop-box handle resizing along the way:

Successfully tested the following build steps in Windows 11 24H2 ARM64, macOS 26.4.1 Tahoe, and Ubuntu Linux 22.04:

1. Install prerequisites

Windows

• Git
• Visual Studio 2026 (select "Desktop development with C++")
• Rust
• Node.js
• wasm-pack (wasm-pack-init.exe)
• LLVM/Clang
  1. winget install LLVM.LLVM --source winget
  2. set PATH=C:\Program Files\LLVM\bin;%PATH%

macOS

macOS offers native PDF cropping in Preview.

• /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
• brew install wasm-pack
• curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
• source "$HOME/.cargo/env"
• brew install node

Linux

• sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev libssl-dev llvm clang
• curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
• source "$HOME/.cargo/env"
• curl https://rustwasm.github.io/wasm-pack/installer/init.sh -sSf | sh
• sudo apt install nodejs npm -y

2. Configure Rust

rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown
cargo install tauri-cli --locked

3. Clone and enter the repo

git clone https://github.com/citricguy/pdfcrop.github.io-tauri/
cd pdfcrop.github.io-tauri\pdfcrop\examples\pdfcrop.github.io

4. Install JS dependencies

npm install

5. Build WASM package

wasm-pack build --target web --release --out-dir pkg

6. Compile the app

npm run desktop:build

In Windows, find pdfcrop-desktop.exe (~5MB) in src-tauri\target\release\. To build for x64 & x86 under ARM64:

rustup target add x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
cargo tauri build --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
rustup target add i686-pc-windows-msvc
cargo tauri build --target i686-pc-windows-msvc

Related

• Cropping PDFs
• Optimizing PDFs for E Ink displays
• Batch crop a stack of visually overlaid images like Briss
• Delete content cropped from PDFs in Preview
• Tauri false positives

❧ 2026-04-10

Stickies app data missing after upgrade or migration

Problem

• Lost Sticky notes upgrading to macOS Catalina

• Losing my mind. How can I import my StickiesDatabase file, from High Sierra, to Big Sur?

• Stickies did not migrate from High Sierra to new M3 macbook

• How do I move Stickies files from Mojave to Sequoia?

• Stickies disappeared when reinstalling OSX Ventura after log in issues.

• How to migrate Stickies database from Mojave to Catalina?

• Stickies Database file location on Catalina 10.15

macOS Mojave and earlier store sticky notes in a single file, ~/Library/StickiesDatabase. Catalina and later use ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Stickies/ (Finder displays it as ~/Library/Containers/Stickies/), with RTFD files in ./Data/Library/Stickies/ and note color and window positioning data stored in ./Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Stickies.plist.

For many macOS upgrade scenarios that straddle this divide (e.g., High Sierra to Sequoia), the database migration silently fails. Even in the best case (as when upgrading from Mojave to Catalina), colors revert to yellow and window positioning is lost.

Solutions

• Stickies.app 10.2 (build 138) from macOS 10.14.6 can be copied to Tahoe alongside ~/Library/StickiesDatabase and runs successfully; colors and window positions are preserved. "Export Text…" (Plain Text, RTF, RTFD) works; "Export All to Notes…" does not.

• If preserving sticky note colors isn't necessary, simply restore ~/Library/StickiesDatabase to a clean macOS 10.15, 11, 12, or 13 instance; Stickies will populate com.apple.Stickies from it on first launch (fails under macOS 14, 15, & 26).

• 1. In Mojave, restore a backup of ~/Library/StickiesDatabase. 2. Optionally export to Notes.app (File → Export All to Notes…) for posterity; colors are preserved as folder names. The Notes database (~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes) can be imported as-is into modern macOS versions. 3. Upgrade Mojave to Catalina; com.apple.Stickies can now be imported into later versions including Tahoe. Colors must be manually corrected (or perhaps scripted to extract values from StickiesDatabase and insert into com.apple.Stickies.plist, an exercise left for the reader). Windows can be un-stacked via AppleScript; this example (tested in Catalina and Tahoe) uses a 5-column layout:

  tell application "Stickies" to activate
  
  tell application "System Events"
      tell process "Stickies"
          set winList to windows
          set winCount to count of winList
  
          set numColumns to 5
          set noteWidth to 300
          set noteHeight to 200
          set xGap to 20
          set yGap to 20
          set baseX to 50
          set baseY to 50
  
          repeat with i from 1 to winCount
              set colIndex to ((i - 1) mod numColumns)
              set rowIndex to ((i - 1) div numColumns)
              set theWin to item i of winList
              set position of theWin to {baseX + colIndex * (noteWidth + xGap), baseY + rowIndex * (noteHeight + yGap)}
              set size of theWin to {noteWidth, noteHeight}
          end repeat
      end tell
  end tell

Related: Stickies extraction scripts

• Stickies.app Exporter: "Run this script to export your Stickies in RTF format."

• pystickies: "Converts the database from the Mac's 'Stickies' program into RTF files, one per sticky. This is platform-independent, it doesn't use Cocoa to do the conversion, but rather uses heuristics to find the RTF data within the Stickies database."

• pytypedstream: "A pure Python, cross-platform library/tool for reading Mac OS X and NeXTSTEP typedstream files. ... the typedstream data format is still used by some macOS components and applications, such as the Stickies and Grapher applications."

• StickiesDbConverter: "Brief python script for exporting a StickiesDatabase file on macOS to a plain text file."

• macOS_stickies.py: "parse osx sticky databases."

❧ 2026-04-04

Thunderbird silently blanks emails after IMAP-to-Exchange switch

Since switching to Thunderbird's new Microsoft Exchange support announced on November 18, 2025, 24 messages moved from Microsoft's server to local storage have ended up completely blank, much like the macOS Mail bug extensively covered by Michael Tsai. All 24 show a file size of 127 bytes, containing only:

X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
X-Mozilla-Keys:

Granted, this is with Maildir enabled and hundreds of thousands of messages across dozens of folders, but the bug had never appeared when the account was configured as IMAP in Thunderbird, so have switched back for now. (The new account had to be set up manually, then switched to OAuth for both IMAP and SMTP, as it wasn't offered otherwise (setup in a fresh Thunderbird profile worked normally). One downside of returning to IMAP: syncing changes to macOS Mail once again requires quitting Thunderbird.)

Update

While penning this post, happened upon an open bug from 17 years ago:

Thunderbird "loses"/corrupts email messages when downloading from the mail server to a local folder

❧ 2026-04-02

Move fast and break Windows

or, Shipping bugs at scale with AI:

2025

Apr:

• Satya Nadella says as much as 30% of Microsoft code is written by AI

May:

• Microsoft Update Fails—New Download Breaks Windows

Jun:

• Microsoft Confirms Windows 11 Updates Broken. Fix Now — Here’s How

Jul:

• Latest Windows 11 update fail brings yet more installation woes – but some other reported bugs have me seriously worried

Aug:

• Microsoft’s August 2025 security updates are breaking recovery tools on Windows 10 and Windows 11 PCs

Sep:

• Recent Windows updates break Blu-ray and other protected video content playback on PC

Oct:

• Windows 11 update breaks localhost, prompting mass uninstall workaround

• Windows 11's October update just broke the Windows Recovery Environment — USB keyboards and mice unusable in Windows RE after latest bug hits

Nov:

• Microsoft finally admits almost all major Windows 11 core features are broken

• Microsoft confirms PCs boot into BitLocker recovery after the latest Windows updates

Dec:

• Latest Windows 11 updates may break the OS's most basic bits

• Microsoft Confirms Windows Security Update Breaks VPN Connections

• Microsoft: Recent Windows updates break RemoteApp connections

• Microsoft can't fix Windows 11 because it won't stop breaking it

2026

Jan:

• Microsoft confirms that a stack of bad Windows updates is causing boot issues

• ‘Nightmare’—Microsoft Update Breaks Windows For Millions

• Microsoft Confirms Emergency Update For Millions Of Outlook Users

  • Fixes or workarounds for recent issues in classic Outlook for Windows

• Windows 11 had 20+ major update problems in 2025 and and 2026 started badly too. What are you doing, Microsoft?

Feb:

• Microsoft confirms more Windows PCs cannot shut down after recent updates

• February’s Windows 11 update is causing startup problems for users

Mar:

• Microsoft: KB5079473 breaks internet access to Windows 11 Teams, Edge, OneDrive, Copilot

• It's actually happening — Microsoft promises to fix the biggest issues in Windows 11, from AI slop to pushy Windows Updates

• Microsoft's "Fix" for Windows 11: Flowers After the Beating

❧ 2026-03-22

"defrag" error on IODD virtual CD-ROM

IODD's virtual CD-ROMs like the ST300 and MINI often display "defrag" when attempting to mount newly-imported ISO images, as detailed by ./techtipsy.

The IODD Guide explains that "The ISO/VHD file is too fragmented to load (Max 24 fragments for ISO; 0 for VHD)." and suggests "Use defragmentation utilities like MyDefrag (dead link) or Defraggler."

Another option is WinContig (H/T), a green, portable app that merited a rare addition to the System page:

🌱 WinContig v5.0.3.3 [961K] + "Quickly defragment individual files without the need to defragment the entire disk." Supports Windows Vista through 11, server versions from 2008 to 2019, and FAT, FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, and ReFS filesystems. 📺

Updates

1. Initially skipped SysInternals' Contig, believing it only supported NTFS as claimed on Wikipedia ("Supported file systems: NTFS") and even more explicitly on Grokipedia ("It exclusively supports the NTFS file system, leveraging the native Windows NT defragmentation API introduced in NT 4.0, and does not function on FAT, exFAT, or other file systems."). However, version 1.83 successfully defragmented an ISO file on an exFAT-formatted drive.

2. IODD offers VHD Tool++, a portable app with a number of functions including file defragmenting. However, the current version (0.8.0.1) simply wraps Contig, which is bundled inside. (Curiously, VHD Tool++ is not mentioned on IODD's own error messages page, which instead recommends MyDefrag and Defraggler as noted above.)

❧ 2026-03-22

Setting up Spectrum hawaii.rr.com email accounts in Thunderbird

• IMAP & SMTP server: mail.twc.com (not mobile.charter.net, smtp-server.hawaii.rr.com, etc.)

• The Spectrum Email Server Settings and Spectrum Email Troubleshooting pages specify using SSL, but Thunderbird will fail to send messages unless SSL is switched to STARTTLS in SMTP settings.

• To reset email account password, skip the "Forgot Email Password?" link found on the Spectrum webmail login page, as it currently times out; head to https://id.spectrum.net/recover instead (also accessible via https://www.spectrum.net → "Sign In" → "Forgot Username or Password?").

❧ 2026-03-19

Lightweight, performant Linux distro for legacy Intel Macs in 2026

MX Linux, built on Debian Stable and offered in Xfce, KDE, and Fluxbox flavors, booted a 2012 iMac faster than any of the standard distros, with WiFi and sound working out of the box.

OEM installation is as easy as booting from the ISO and running sudo minstall --oem in the terminal (default accounts: demo/demo, root/root).

Related

• Reviving decade-old Macs with antiX and MX Linux | HN

• Why I picked MX Linux over other Linux distros

• MX Linux 25 may be the best distro for old PCs that nobody talks about

• 4 reasons why I would pick MX Linux instead of AntiX for old PCs

• 4 MX Linux Tools that I miss while using Ubuntu and other Linux distros

• Best Linux distro for a 2009 MacBook Pro?

• Breathing new life into a 2006 MacBook

• Install Haiku on a Core Duo 2006 MacBook Pro (17-inch)

❧ 2026-03-06

Run tiny apps in the browser

with RetroTick (GH | HN):

"Run classic Windows and DOS executables directly in your browser. No installation required. Just drag, drop, and watch programs come alive in a web page.

"RetroTick is an x86 virtual machine and Windows/DOS API compatibility layer built from scratch in TypeScript. It parses PE (Win32), NE (Win16), and MZ (DOS) binaries, executes x86 machine code instruction by instruction, and reimplements a subset of the Win32, Win16, and DOS API surface, enough to boot several .exe files from the classic Windows era and render their GUIs in the browser."

The demo site offers a host of classics to enjoy:

• Games
  • Cards (DLL)
  • FreeCell
  • SkiFree
  • Solitaire
  • Minesweeper
• Programs
  • Calculator
  • Clock
  • Command Prompt
  • GLX Gears
  • MS-DOS QBasic
  • Sound Recorder
  • Super PI
  • Task Manager
  • Welcome to Windows 95
• Screen Savers
  • 3D Maze
  • 3D Pipes
  • Bezier
  • Flower Box
  • Marquee
  • Mystify
  • Starfield Simulation

Updates

• The developer shared on HN: "Hidden feature: right-click any executable and select 'View Resources' to browse its embedded resources like icons, bitmaps, dialogs, and version info. It even supports viewing Delphi forms (though Delphi programs can't actually run yet). Think of it as a browser-based Resource Hacker or eXeScope."

• retrowin32 "is a still-early Windows emulator for the web (and other non-Windows platforms). Take a win32 .exe file and run it in a web browser or a Mac. See some demos."

❧ 2026-02-27

Apple Discussions: Access Denied

Despite billing itself as a "vibrant community", the Apple Support Community (aka Apple Discussions) apparently does not tolerate dissent.

A Google search turned up iOS 26.2 (and all of 26) worst upgrade ever hosted on Apple's discussion forum:

Clicking the link redirected to a login page, which was unusual, but OK:

That led to an Access Denied page (despite other discussion pages remaining accessible):

Happily, the Wayback Machine had a copy; it showed 1,706 "Me too" votes just 23 days after the post was made:

Apple isn't having quite as much luck censoring the rest of the web:

• Wired: Phone Updates Used to Be Annoying. The Latest iOS Is Awful

• Macworld: iOS 26 is a massive flop with iPhone users, and you can probably guess why

• NPR: Why the latest iPhone update is leaving ordinary users and tech experts grumbling

• MacRumors: I absolutely loathe iOS 26

• Tom's Guide: iOS 26 complaints are piling up — should you wait to upgrade?

❧ 2026-02-14