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Category Archives: macOS

RSwitch 1.5.1 Released

An RSwitch user, lcolladotor filed a most-welcome issue letting me know that the core functionality of the switcher was busted 😱. After testing out the 1.5.1 release candidate I had made a “harmless” & “clever” change to reduce some redundancy in the code that handled with switching which resulted in busted symbolic link creation. Tis fixed, now.

To somewhat make amends for said error James Balamuta’s excellent “R Compiler Tools for Rcpp on macOS” resource (https://thecoatlessprofessor.com/programming/cpp/r-compiler-tools-for-rcpp-on-macos/) as been added to the available web resources links.

I’ve also setup a mailing list for RSwitch over at sourcehut where you can signup directly w/a (free) sourcehut account (signup by just email) and see archives. The RSwitch menu has a new link to the mailing list.

There’s also a new blog category for RSwitch which has it’s own RSS feed (https://rud.is/b/category/rswitch/feed/) to make it easier to keep up with RSwitch-only updates.

“Check for updates” will get you to the new release or you can grab it directly from the RSwitch site.

RSwitch 1.5.0 Release Now Also Corrals RStudio Server Connections

RSwitch is a macOS menubar application that works on macOS 10.14+ and provides handy shortcuts for developing with R on macOS. Version 1.5.0 brings a reorganized menu system and the ability to manage and make connections to RStudio Server instances. Here’s a quick peek at the new setup:

All books, links, and other reference resources are under a single submenu system:

If there’s a resource you’d like added, follow the links on the main RSwitch site to file PRs where you’re most comfortable.

You can also setup automatic checks and notifications for when new RStudio Dailies are available (you can still always check manually and this check feature is off by default):

But, the biggest new feature is the ability to manage and launch RStudio Server connections right from RSwitch:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

These RStudio Server browser connections are kept separate from your internet browsing and are one menu selection away. RSwitch also remembers the size and position of your RStudio Server session windows, so everything should be where you want/need/expect. This is somewhat of an experimental feature so definitely file issues if you run into any problems or would like things to work differently.

FIN

Kick the tyres, file issues or requests and, if so inclined, let me know how you’re liking RSwitch!

RSwitch 1.4.1 Released

A minor update to RSwitch has been released. Apart from some internal code reorganization there are three user-facing changes.

First, RSwitch is now notarized! That means you won’t get a notice about it being from an “unidentified developer” nor will folks on Catalina see a warning about unable to check the download for malware. You can use {macthekinfe} to check out the application signature and notarization info:

check_sig("/Applications/RSwitch.app") %>% 
  print(n=nrow(.))
## # A tibble: 25 x 2
##    key                         value                                                               
##    <chr>                       <chr>                                                               
##  1 Executable                  /Applications/RSwitch.app/Contents/MacOS/RSwitch                    
##  2 Identifier                  is.rud.bob.RSwitch                                                  
##  3 Format                      app bundle with Mach-O thin (x86_64)                                
##  4 CodeDirectory v             20500 size=1342 flags=0x10000(runtime) hashes=33+5 location=embedded
##  5 VersionPlatform             1                                                                   
##  6 VersionMin                  658944                                                              
##  7 VersionSDK                  659200                                                              
##  8 Hash type                   sha256 size=32                                                      
##  9 CandidateCDHash sha256      efa512a9daabfb9402af8a91697f008b89ffa81e                            
## 10 CandidateCDHashFull sha256  efa512a9daabfb9402af8a91697f008b89ffa81ea014452821e39a5365d80fe6    
## 11 Hash choices                sha256                                                              
## 12 CMSDigest                   efa512a9daabfb9402af8a91697f008b89ffa81ea014452821e39a5365d80fe6    
## 13 CMSDigestType               2                                                                   
## 14 Page size                   4096                                                                
## 15 CDHash                      efa512a9daabfb9402af8a91697f008b89ffa81e                            
## 16 Signature size              8968                                                                
## 17 Authority                   Developer ID Application: Bob Rudis (CBY22P58G8)                    
## 18 Authority                   Developer ID Certification Authority                                
## 19 Authority                   Apple Root CA                                                       
## 20 Timestamp                   Sep 1, 2019 at 08:46:41                                             
## 21 Info.plist entries          26                                                                  
## 22 TeamIdentifier              CBY22P58G8                                                          
## 23 Runtime Version             10.15.0                                                             
## 24 Sealed Resources version    2 rules=13 files=26                                                 
## 25 Internal requirements count 1 size=212

check_notarization("/Applications/RSwitch.app")
## # A tibble: 4 x 2
##   key         value                                           
##   <chr>       <chr>                                           
## 1 application /Applications/RSwitch.app                       
## 2 status      accepted                                        
## 3 source      Notarized Developer ID                          
## 4 origin      Developer ID Application: Bob Rudis (CBY22P58G8)

Note: you may (I’m working on installing it in a fresh Catalina VM to know definitely) need to ensure RSwitch is granted “Full Disk Access” in System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> [Privacy] tab to ensure it can operate where it needs to:


Next, since it’s possible to have an old set of just package libraries at a given /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/#.# path but no R binary in said locations, the script now does what the R Core RSwitch app (Simon was kind enough to forward that R-Forge SVN web link) does and performs some extra validation to see if a given R version directory is, indeed, switchable to. Directories that aren’t switchable are shown but grayed out (as in the image, below) and marked as “incomplete”. You probably should clean out those old paths.

Finally, in the same image keen observers will see a few more relevant links have been added to the “bookmarks”. I added them because I frequent them as I work on R-related things.

Folks who are running 1.4.0 should be able to use the “Check for update…” menu item to get to the releases page. You can also get it from the RSwitch landing page or download it directly via: https://rud.is/rswitch/releases/RSwitch-1.4.1.app.zip.

FIN

RSwitch feels feature complete so the pace of development and releases will likely slow a bit. Some spiffy folks have offered both a new app icon and a request to make it easier to switch between running RStudio/R GUI instances and I’m working on incorporating both of those ideas into the app. If you do have a problem, question, or feature request, definitely file an issue on your favorite social coding site. Links to where RSwitch source code can be found to file said issue(s) are at the bottom of the RSwitch landing page.

RSwitch 1.4.0 Released

Swift 5 has been so much fun to hack on that there’s a new update to macOS R-focused mebubar utility RSwitch available. Along with the app comes a new dedicated RSwitch landing page and a new user’s guide since it has enough features to warrant such documentation. Here’s the new menu

The core changes/additions include:

  • a reorganized menu (see above)
  • the use of notifications instead of alerts
  • disabling of download menu entries while download is in progress
  • the ability to start new R GUI or RStudio instances
  • the ability to switch to and make running R GUI or RStudio instances active
  • additional “bookmarks” in the reorganized web resources submenu
  • Built-in check for updates

To make RSwitch launch at startup, just add it as a login item to your user in the “Users & Groups” pane of “System Preferences”.

The guide has information on how all the existing and new features work plus provides documentation on the how to install the alternate R versions available at the R for macOS Developer’s Page. There’s also a slightly expanded set of information on how to contribute to RSwitch development.

FIN

As usual, kick the tyres, file feature requests or bug reports where you’re comfortable, & — if you’re macOS-dev-curious — join in the Swift 5 fun (it really is a pretty fun language).

Improvements to RSwitch in v1.3.0

It’s only been a couple days since the initial version of my revamped take on RSwitch but there have been numerous improvements since then worth mentioning.

For starters, there’s a new app icon that uses the blue and gray from the official (modern) R logo to help visually associate it with R:

In similar fashion, the menubar icon now looks better in dark mode (I may still tweak it a bit, tho).

There are also some new features in the menu bar from v1.0.0:

  • numbered shortcuts for each R version
  • handy menubar links to R resources on the internet
  • two menubar links to make it easier to download the latest RStudio dailies by hand (if you’re not using something like Homebrew already for that) and the latest R-devel macOS distribution tarball
  • saner/cleaner alerts

On tap for 1.4.0 is using Notification Center for user messaging vs icky alerts and, perhaps, some TouchBar icons for Mac folk with capable MacBook Pro models.

FIN

As usual, kick the tyres & file issues, questions, feature requests & PRs where you like.

Quick Hit: A new 64-bit Swift 5 RSwitch App

At the bottom of the R for macOS Developer’s Page there’s mention of an “other binary” called “RSwitch” that is “a small GUI that allows you to switch between R versions quickly (if you have multiple versions of R framework installed).” Said switching requires you to use the “tar.gz” versions of R from the R for macOS Developer’s Page since the official CRAN binary installers clean up after themselves quite nicely to prevent potentially wacky behavior.

All the RSwitch GUI did was change the Current alias target in /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions to the appropriate version. You can do that from the command line but the switcher GUI was created so that means some folks prefer click-switching and I have found myself using the GUI on occasion (before it stopped working on macOS Vista^wCatalina).

Since I:

  • work on Catalina most of the day
  • play with oldrel and devel versions of R
  • needed to brush up on Swift 5 coding
  • wanted RSwitch as a menubar app vs one with a dialog that I could easily lose across 15 desktops
  • decided to see if it was possible to make it work sandboxed (TLDR: it isn’t)
  • really wanted a different icon for the binary
  • couldn’t sleep last night

there was sufficient justification to create a 64-bit version of this app.

You can clone the project from any of the following social coding sites:

and, you can either compile it yourself — which is recommended since it’s 2019 and the days of even remotely trusting binaries off the internet are long gone — or build it. It should work on 10.14+ since I set that as the target, but file an issue where you like if you have, well, issues with the code or binary.

Once you do have it working, there will be a dial-switch menu in the menubar and a menu that should look something like:

The item with the checkbox is the Current alias.

FIN

Kick the tyres, file issues & PRs as you’re wont to do and prepare for the forthcoming clickpocalypse as Apple nears their GA release of Catalina.

Trawling Through iOS Backups For Treasure (a.k.a. How to fish for target files in iOS backups) with R

In a recent previous post I brazenly talked over the “hard parts” of how I got to the target SQLite file that houses “mowing history” for what has become my weekend obsession. So, we’ll cover just how to do that (find things in iOS backups) in this post along with how to deal with some “gotchas” if you’re doing this from macOS.

macOS (the Knife)

Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, and Marc Blitzstein created some amazing lyrics that Bobby Darin did some sweet, sweet justice to:

I bring that up to talk about the cutting, biting, dangerous edge of macOS that is Apple’s somewhat mixed attempt at protecting your privacy and keeping out of sight sensitive files and directories from the the sharp teeth of malware (and to re-pimp my {mactheknife} package) . You can read up on Apple’s new protections more thoroughly over at The Eclectic Light Company. For the purposes of this blog post, Apple’s macOS Sandbox policies means you have to do some extra steps to gain access to the folder and files associated with iOS backups (which is ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/).

If you want RStudio, R, and anything run with Rscript to access these sandboxed areas you’ll need to enable “Full Disk Access” for those apps and executables. First you’ll need to open System Preferences > Security & Privacy and then make the Privacy tab active. Keep that window open and tap the lock to unlock the settings.

Full Disk Access settings panel in macOS

Full Disk Access settings panel in macOS

Adding RStudio is easy. Just make Finder active and hit Cmd Shift A and then find and drag the “RStudio” application into the pane+tab you opened in the previous step. Back in the Finder, hit Cmd Shift G and paste in: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/bin and go to that folder. Drag in R and Rscript each into the pane+tab from the aforementioned step. Finally (and this got me for a minute) you also need to (again, in Finder) hit Cmd Shift G and paste in /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.6/Resources/bin/exec and drag that R executable into the Security & Privacy Privacy/Full Disk Access pane+tab as well. When you’ve done all that, lock the System Preferences pane and close it.

It is important to note that you just gave “R” and anything that calls R from your user space complete (well, almost) access to every sandboxed area on your system. R is a general purpose programming and scripting language which means any bit of malicious code that knows you have added those executables can use R to read from and write to any area on your system.

It is also important to note that I had to use 3.6 vs the Current symlink for the last entry so that means you need to do this for each new R version you install.

I hope folks on legacy Windows OS installs didn’t skip over this part as you’ll need to go here to figure out where your iOS backups folder is to go through the rest of the post.

Sneakin’ Round The Corner

Windows folks hopefully read at least the last bit of the previous section to figure out where their iOS backups are. On macOS that’s ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/. You need a local backup there (most folks just use iCloud backups these days) and Apple tells you how to do this.

Once you know you’ve got an (unencrypted) backup just go to your iOS backups directory and list the files by date and note the name/path of the most recent backup. Now we can have some fun.

library(XML) # to read plist (property list) files
library(tidyverse) # for printing and access to sqlite dbs

# replace this with the relative path to your most recent backup dir
mb <- "~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/28500cd31b9580aaf5815c695ebd3ea5f7455628-20190601-165737"

list.files(mb, pattern = ".*\\.(db|plist)$")
## [1] "Info.plist"      "Manifest.db"      "Manifest.plist"      "Status.plist"

The above code looks for some key metadata files for iOS backups.

  • Info.plist has info on your device
  • Manifest.db has tons of info on all the files in the backup in a SQLite database
  • Manifest.plist has some additional metadata on the backup including applications included in the backup
  • Status.plist contains info on the status of the backup

Let’s take a look at the plists:

info_p <- file.path(mb, "Info.plist")
file.copy(info_p, "/tmp", overwrite = TRUE)
system2("plutil", args=c("-convert", "xml1", "-o", "/tmp/Info.plist", "/tmp/Info.plist"))

info <- XML::readKeyValueDB("/tmp/Info.plist")

str(info)
## List of 11
##  $ Device Name        : chr REDACTED
##  $ Display Name       : chr REDACTED
##  $ ICCID              : chr REDACTED
##  $ IMEI               : chr REDACTED
##  $ IPBE Backup Version: int 1
##  $ Last Backup Date   : POSIXct[1:1], format: "2019-06-01 21:23:02"
##  $ Phone Number       : chr REDACTED
##  $ Product Type       : chr REDACTED
##  $ Product Version    : chr REDACTED
##  $ Serial Number      : chr REDACTED
##  $ Unique Identifier  : chr REDACTED

status_p <- file.path(mb, "Status.plist")
file.copy(status_p, "/tmp", overwrite = TRUE)
system2("plutil", args=c("-convert", "xml1", "-o", "/tmp/Status.plist", "/tmp/Status.plist"))

status <- XML::readKeyValueDB("/tmp/Status.plist")

str(status)
## List of 6
##  $ BackupState  : chr "new"
##  $ Date         : POSIXct[1:1], format: "2019-06-01 21:22:53"
##  $ IsFullBackup : logi FALSE
##  $ SnapshotState: chr "finished"
##  $ UUID         : chr REDACTED
##  $ Version      : chr "3.3"

mainf_p <- file.path(mb, "Manifest.plist")
file.copy(mainf_p, "/tmp", overwrite = TRUE)
system2("plutil", args=c("-convert", "xml1", "-o", "/tmp/Manifest.plist", "/tmp/Manifest.plist"))

manifest <- XML::readKeyValueDB("/tmp/Manifest.plist")

str(manifest, 1)
## List of 8
##  $ Applications        :List of 745
##  $ BackupKeyBag        : chr __truncated__
##  $ Date                : POSIXct[1:1], format: "2019-06-01 20:57:40"
##  $ IsEncrypted         : logi FALSE
##  $ Lockdown            :List of 12
##  $ SystemDomainsVersion: chr "24.0"
##  $ Version             : chr "10.0"
##  $ WasPasscodeSet      : logi TRUE

You’ll note we’re making copies of these files (never play with system-managed files directly unless you know what you’re doing) and turning binary property lists into plain text XML property lists as well so we can read them with the XML::readKeyValueDB() function.

Most of that information is fairly useless for this blog post but I figured you might like to see the hidden things the system knows about your devices. What we do want to check is to see if the John Deere application and data made it into the backup. The Applications slot is a named list of application metadata. Let’s see if there’s anything Deere-ish in it:

grep("deere", names(manifest$Applications), ignore.case = TRUE, value = TRUE)
##                   key 
## "com.deere.mowerplus"

str(manifest$Applications$com.deere.mowerplus, 1)
## List of 4
##  $ CFBundleIdentifier   : chr "com.deere.mowerplus"
##  $ CFBundleVersion      : chr "180"
##  $ ContainerContentClass: chr "Data/Application"
##  $ Path                 : chr "/var/containers/Bundle/Application/30DF2640-A9AA-43A0-AD87-932CA513D75A/MowerPlus.app"

Aye! This means we should have some luck finding “mower” data in the Manifest SQLite database.

Now, we could try to follow UUIDs around but we can also take a stab at a less cumbersome approach. Let’s make a copy of the Manifest database and see what it holds:

mainf_d <- file.path(mb, "Manifest.db")
file.copy(mainf_d, "/tmp", overwrite = TRUE)
## [1] TRUE

(manifest_db <- src_sqlite("/tmp/Manifest.db"))
## src:  sqlite 3.22.0 [/private/tmp/Manifest.db]
## tbls: Files, Properties

We want to get to (hopefully) a SQLite file with the mowing data so we likely care about the Files table. Let’s take a look at the structure of that table:

(fils <- tbl(manifest_db, "Files"))
## # Source:   table<Files> [?? x 5]
## # Database: sqlite 3.22.0 [/private/tmp/Manifest.db]
##    fileID           domain         relativePath           flags        file
##    <chr>            <chr>          <chr>                  <int>      <blob>
##  1 c1da4199a18d0b5… AppDomain-com… ""                         2 <raw 437 B>
##  2 7426ac0386e2887… AppDomain-com… Library                    2 <raw 444 B>
##  3 a6393e739e1ad37… AppDomain-com… Library/WebKit             2 <raw 444 B>
##  4 c54f5c77a5e970b… AppDomain-com… Library/WebKit/Websit…     2 <raw 458 B>
##  5 578f2c96f219e95… AppDomain-com… Library/WebKit/Websit…     2 <raw 465 B>
##  6 c8833032ce7c9e9… AppDomain-com… Library/WebKit/Websit…     2 <raw 481 B>
##  7 6af21902e595f7c… AppDomain-com… Library/WebKit/Websit…     2 <raw 468 B>
##  8 4c1c49324646af0… AppDomain-com… Library/WebKit/Websit…     2 <raw 471 B>
##  9 d0636bf9b5ba2ae… AppDomain-com… Library/WebKit/Websit…     2 <raw 468 B>
## 10 0b6bb30c8abaa4e… AppDomain-com… Library/Preferences        2 <raw 458 B>
## # … with more rows

If you have a ton of apps, this is a pretty big haystack to comb through. We may be able to narrow things down a bit, though, and we’ll start by seeing what that domain column holds:

distinct(fils, domain)
## # Source:   lazy query [?? x 1]
## # Database: sqlite 3.22.0 [/private/tmp/Manifest.db]
##    domain                                 
##    <chr>                                  
##  1 AppDomain-Outils-OBD-Facile.EOBD-Facile
##  2 AppDomain-ch.threema.iapp              
##  3 AppDomain-co.humanco.Human             
##  4 AppDomain-co.ortatech.colr-app         
##  5 AppDomain-co.vero.app                  
##  6 AppDomain-com.7thg.Tides               
##  7 AppDomain-com.AerLingus                
##  8 AppDomain-com.BloomSky.BloomSky        
##  9 AppDomain-com.PunchThrough.LightBlue   
## 10 AppDomain-com.agilebits.onepassword-ios
## # … with more rows

So, these are app-specific and the bits after the - in each one look like the CFBundleIdentifiers from above. Let’s make sure:

filter(fils, lower(domain) %like% "%com.deere.mowerplus%") %>% 
  distinct(domain)
## # Source:   lazy query [?? x 1]
## # Database: sqlite 3.22.0 [/private/tmp/Manifest.db]
##   domain                       
##   <chr>                        
## 1 AppDomain-com.deere.mowerplus

Aye! Let’s check to see what files are in there (and hope for a nice SQLite database):

filter(fils, domain == "AppDomain-com.deere.mowerplus") %>%
  select(relativePath) %>% 
  collect() 
## # A tibble: 14 x 1
##    relativePath                                                     
##    <chr>                                                            
##  1 ""                                                               
##  2 Library                                                          
##  3 Library/Preferences                                              
##  4 Library/Application Support                                      
##  5 Library/Application Support/com.crashlytics                      
##  6 Documents                                                        
##  7 Library/GoAppPersistentStore-GoMow.sqlite                        
##  8 Library/googleanalytics-aux-v4.sql                               
##  9 Library/googleanalytics-v3.sql                                   
## 10 Library/Preferences/com.deere.mowerplus.plist                    
## 11 Library/Application Support/ActivityCards.sqlite                 
## 12 Library/Application Support/com.crashlytics/CLSUserDefaults.plist
## 13 Library/googleanalytics-v2.sql                                   
## 14 Library/Application Support/MowTracking.sqlite

It turns out that last one is what we’re looking for. Now we just need a bit of crucial metadata to get to it:

filter(fils, relativePath == "Library/Application Support/MowTracking.sqlite") %>% 
  select(fileID, relativePath)
## # Source:   lazy query [?? x 2]
## # Database: sqlite 3.22.0 [/private/tmp/Manifest.db]
##   fileID                            relativePath                           
##   <chr>                             <chr>                                  
## 1 ad0009ec04c44b544d37bfc7ab343869… Library/Application Support/MowTrackin…

That fileID maps to the seriously ugly directory tree that is the rest of the iOS backups folder (you likely looked into it and wondered “What the heck?!”). The top level is a 2-digit hex prefix with files underneath it (likely for performance reasons but a bit of obfuscation never hurts, too). We’ll get the whole string:

filter(fils, relativePath == "Library/Application Support/MowTracking.sqlite") %>% 
  select(fileID)
## # Source:   lazy query [?? x 1]
## # Database: sqlite 3.22.0 [/private/tmp/Manifest.db]
##   fileID                                  
##   <chr>                                   
## 1 ad0009ec04c44b544d37bfc7ab3438697d23d618

and, then copy over the mowing database somewhere safe to work on:

file.copy(
  file.path(mb, "ad/ad0009ec04c44b544d37bfc7ab3438697d23d618"),
  "/tmp/mowtrack.sqlite",
  overwrite = TRUE
)
## [1] TRUE

mow <- src_sqlite("/tmp/mowtrack.sqlite")

mow
## src:  sqlite 3.22.0 [/private/tmp/mowtrack.sqlite]
## tbls: Z_METADATA, Z_MODELCACHE, Z_PRIMARYKEY, ZACTIVITY, ZDEALER,
##   ZMOWALERT, ZMOWER, ZMOWLOCATION, ZSMARTCONNECTOR, ZUSER

tbl(mow, "ZMOWLOCATION") %>% 
  glimpse()
## Observations: ??
## Variables: 16
## Database: sqlite 3.22.0 [/private/tmp/mowtrack.sqlite]
## $ Z_PK                <int> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 1…
## $ Z_ENT               <int> 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8,…
## $ Z_OPT               <int> 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,…
## $ ZISPAUSEDPOINT      <int> NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, …
## $ ZORDER              <int> 1, 2, 0, 11, 20, 58, 38, 43, 30, 25, 21, 10,…
## $ ZSESSION            <int> 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,…
## $ ZSESSION2           <int> NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, …
## $ ZALTITUDE           <dbl> 42.64804, 42.70590, 40.99661, 39.54770, 38.2…
## $ ZCOURSE             <dbl> 358.242188, 332.226562, 18.281250, 260.85937…
## $ ZHORIZONTALACCURACY <dbl> 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5,…
## $ ZLATITUDE           <dbl> 43.25913, 43.25914, 43.25913, 43.25915, 43.2…
## $ ZLONGITUDE          <dbl> -70.80069, -70.80069, -70.80069, -70.80067, …
## $ ZSPEED              <dbl> 0.0000000, 0.4250179, 0.5592341, 0.3802792, …
## $ ZTIMESTAMP          <dbl> 581100271, 581100272, 581100270, 581100281, …
## $ ZVERTICALACCURACY   <dbl> 6, 6, 8, 6, 4, 4, 4, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 4, 4, 4,…
## $ ZKLVDATA            <blob> <NA>, <NA>, <NA>, <NA>, <NA>, <NA>, <NA>, <…

(Shark) FIN

Even if you don’t have this mower app that I’m currently obsessed with, you now have a primer on how to get to SQLite databases stored by any application on your iOS device. That alone may unearth some fun projects for you to hack on. Plus, you also learned a bit on how to do some light forensics on iOS backups with R/RStudio.

If you did your own trawling and found something interesting definitely blog or tweet about it and drop a link in the comments.

Quick Hit: Updates to QuickLookR and {rdatainfo}

I’m using GitUgh links here b/c the issue was submitted there. Those not wishing to be surveilled by Microsoft can find the macOS QuickLook plugin project and {rdatainfo} project in SourceHut and GitLab (~hrbrmstr and hrbrmstr accounts respectively).

I hadn’t touched QuickLookR🔗 or {rdatainfo}🔗 at all since 2016 since it was really just an example proof of concept. Yet the suggestion to have it handle R markdown (Rmd) files felt useful so I updated {rdatainfo} to better handle data loading for rds, rdata, and rda file extensions and made a small update to the macOS {QuickLookR} QuickLook extension project to treat Rmd files as text files which can be previewed then edited with the default Finder extension exitor you’ve (or your apps) have set for Rmd files.

The {rdatainfo} package is only needed if you need/want R data file preview support (i.e. it’s not necessary for R markdown files). Just unzip the plugin release and put it into ~/Library/QuickLook. Here are examples for the four file types (the example code under saveRDS() and save() was used to generate those data files and the R markdown file is the default one):

file icons

file icons

Rmd preview

Rmd Preview

rds preview

rds preview

rdata preview

rdata preview

FIN

This is my first Xcode app build under macOS 10.14 so definitely file issues if you’re having trouble installing or compiling (there are some new shared library “gotchas” that I don’t think apply to this Xcode project but may).