macOS Setup

I want to use this post as reference for setting up my macOS environment from scratch. Things like default settings, modifications, installations, etc. Time will tell, but hopefully I have captured everything.

System Settings

• iCloud

  • Sign into iCloud account
  • Disable iCloud Drive backup for Desktop and Documents folders

• Notifications

  • Turn off notifications for everything

• Appearance

  • Show scroll bars: Always
  • Click in the scroll bar to: Jump to spot that's clicked

• Control Center

  • Hide everything

• Accessibility

  • Display: Shake mouse pointer to locate: Disable
  • Display: Reduce transparency: Enable

• Apple Intelligence & Siri

  • Disable Apple Intelligence
  • Disable Siri

• Spotlight

  • Help Apple Improve Search: Disable
  • Disable Spotlight for everything except Applications, Calculator, and System Settings

• Desktop & Dock

  • Position: Left
  • Minimize windows: Genie Effect
  • Double-click a window title: Do Nothing
  • Minimize windows into application icon: Disable
  • Automatically hide and show the Dock: Enable
  • Show suggested and recent apps in Dock: Disable
  • Disable Desktop & Stage Manager: Show on Desktop
  • Click wallpaper to reveal desktop: Only in Stage Manager
  • Stage Manager: Disable
  • Widgets: Disable
  • Hot Corners: top-right: Mission Control, bottom-right: Desktop

• Game Center

  • Disable

• Keyboard

  • Key repeat rate: fastest
  • Delay until repeat: shortest
  • Press fn key to: Do Nothing

• Mouse

  • Tracking speed: 70%
  • Natural scrolling: Disable
  • Secondary click: Right Side
  • Smart zoom: Disable

Finder Settings

• Toolbar: Back/Forward, Path, Search

• View as columns

• Sort by name

• Hide folders with chflags hidden <directory>

• General

  • Show these items on desktop: External disks
  • New Finder windows show: $HOME

• Tags

  • Turn off everything

• Sidebar

  • Show these items in the sidebar: AirDrop, Applications, Desktop, Downloads, $HOME, External disks
  • Recent Tags: Disable

• Advanced

  • Uncheck everything except
    • Show all filename extensions: Enable
    • Keep folders on top: In windows when sorting by name
  • When performing a search: Search This Mac

Software

• 1Password: Password manager
• Acorn: Image editor
• AppCleaner: App uninstaller
• Firefox: Web browser
• ForkLift: FTP client
• Ghostty: Terminal emulator
• Hidden Bar: Menu bar manager
• IINA: Media player
• Itsycal: Menu bar calendar
• Keka: Archive manager
• Little Snitch: Network monitor
• Meta and Mp3tag: Audio tagger
• Mimestream: Email client
• Mullvad VPN: VPN service
• Nota: Notes manager
• Pimosa: Media editor
• Radiola: Menu bar internet radio
• Rectangle Pro: Window manager
• Spect: Image viewer and organizer
• Swinsian and Tiny Player: Music players

Terminal

Install Homebrew and packages:

• 1password-cli: Command-line interface for 1Password
• atuin: Improved shell history for zsh, bash, fish and nushell
• b2-tools: B2 Cloud Storage Command-Line Tools
• bat: Clone of cat(1) with syntax highlighting and Git integration
• catimg: Insanely fast image printing in your terminal
• duckdb: Embeddable SQL OLAP Database Management System
• exiftool: Perl lib for reading and writing EXIF metadata
• eza: Modern, maintained replacement for ls
• f2: Command-line batch renaming tool
• fastfetch: Like neofetch, but much faster because written mostly in C
• ffmpeg: Play, record, convert, and stream audio and video
• gh: GitHub command-line tool
• git: Distributed revision control system
• imagemagick: Tools and libraries to manipulate images in many formats
• lftp: Sophisticated file transfer program
• magic-wormhole: Securely transfers data between computers
• neovim: Ambitious Vim-fork focused on extensibility and agility
• pandoc: Swiss-army knife of markup format conversion
• wget: Internet file retriever
• yadm: Yet Another Dotfiles Manager
• yt-dlp: Feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader
• zola: Fast static site generator in a single binary with everything built-in

Programming

• Ensure Xcode is installed with xcode-select -p
• Disable accented character when holding down keys:
  • defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false
• Docker: Container platforms
• Go and R: Programming languages
• MarkEdit: Markdown editor and Preview pane extension
• Quarto: Publishing system
• Sublime Text: Text editor
• uv and ruff: Python tool
• Zed and Positron: Code editors
• Go tools
  • Update Go tools: goup (custom function in the .zfunc file)
• Python versions to install with uv python install <version>
• Tools to install with uv tool install <tool>
  • ty: Python type checker and language server
  • pre-commit: A framework for managing pre-commit hooks
• Add the PATHS to "/private/etc/paths.d"
  • Go: "/usr/local/go/bin"
  • Quarto: "/Applications/quarto/bin"

SSH Key and Github

• Generate a new SSH key and store in 1Password
• Add the SSH key to the ssh-agent
• Add public key to Github (both Authentication and Signing key types)
• Test connection with ssh -T git@github.com

Firefox

• Enable Firefox Sync for bookmarks, addons, and settings
  • Extensions: Kagi, Stylus, Temporary Containers, uBlock Origin, Vimium
• Adjust privacy and extension settings
• Optional: Setup Density for Stylus

Configs

My user settings are either synced in the program or through yadm, which is stored on my private Github repo.

• Clone the dotfile repo for settings and configs (.zsh*, *rc, .config/, etc)
• 1Password for keys, tokens, etc

Themes

• nvim: Paper Color
• Sublime: GitHub Adaptive
• Zed: Minimal
• zsh: Custom zsh prompt