MA

Dev Setup on macOS

I recently set up a macOS dev machine from scratch. This is my notes on the steps I took.

First steps

Homebrew takes a while to install. Tick through the System Preferences in the meantime.

System Preferences

  • Log in with Apple ID

General

  • Appearance auto

Desktop & Screensaver

  • Hot corners bottom right puts display to sleep

Dock & Menu Bar

  • Move dock to left
  • Auto hide dock
  • Disable open animations
  • Bluetooth show in menu bar
  • Focus show in menu bar always
  • A11y shortcuts show in Control Centre
  • Clock no day of week or date
  • Spotlight don’t show in menu bar

Security & Privacy

  • Require password 5 seconds after sleep or screen saver
  • Turn on FileVault TODO
  • Turn on Firewall? Is this going to be a pita?
  • Privacy
    • Disable personalised Ads

Trackpad

  • Increase tracking speed until it feels right.

Keyboard

  • Touchbar shows expanded control strip
  • Press fn key to show emojis
  • Customise control strip
  • Disable some mission control shortcuts (ctrl + up/down)
  • Set key repeat to max speed
  • Shortcuts -> Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls

Spotlight

  • Categories
    • Applications, Calculator, Conversion, Folders, System Preferences

System Preferences

  • Set up Touch ID

Init dotfiles

Chezmoi will install my dotfiles, and run a ‘one time’ setup script to install various tools and apps via homebrew.

chezmoi init github.com/m-allanson/dotfiles --ssh

Chezmoi will also configure some system defaults using another one time setup script.

Terminal

I switched from iTerm2 to WezTerm. WezTerm has a text-based config which I can store as part of my dotfiles. View the config here.

Firefox

  • Set as default browser
  • Set duckduckgo as default search
  • Disable any sponsored suggestions
  • Open previous windows and tabs when starting
  • Disable ‘confirm before quitting with command+Q’
  • Set language to English UK
  • Set mailto links to ‘always ask’
  • Disable ‘save logins and passwords’
  • Enable https only

Extensions

  • 1Password
  • ClearURLs
  • Containerise
  • I don’t care about cookies
  • Multi-Account Containers
  • Nitter redirect?
  • Privacy Badger
  • uBlock origin

VSCode

  • cocopon Iceberg Theme https://cocopon.github.io/iceberg.vim/
  • cocopon Iceberg Light Theme
  • Disable telemetry
  • Disable View -> Appearance -> Activity Bar
  • Settings -> Editor: Font family, set to 'SFMono Nerd Font Mono', Zapfino, Menlo, Monaco, 'Courier New', monospace
  • Move side bar right
  • Disable minimap

I’ve started using VSCode’s settings sync to keep this in sync across different machines.

Other apps

  • Docker (via Docker Desktop)
  • Tableplus
  • DevUtils
  • CleanShot X
  • Sync (sync.com)
  • Grand Perspective
  • ImageOptim
  • VLC
  • Whatsapp
  • Zoom

Other system config

Node.js

I use Volta to manage different node / npm / yarn versions. It’s installed as part of the Chezmoi run once script mentioned earlier.