Mac Setup

This is the procedure I refer to when performing a clean (re)install on an Apple Macintosh

System Settings

When the initial setup procedure is done, the first thing I do is to customise the trackpad settings (System Preferences > View > Trackpad).

In the Point & Click tab:

1. Turn on tap to click
2. Set click strength to light
3. Set tracking speed to the maximum value
4. Turn on silent clicking

In the More Gestures tab:

1. disable the swipe between pages functionality.

Then I move on to the Dock settings (View > Dock & Menu Bar):

1. Automatically hide & show the Dock
2. Do not show recent applications in Dock

Then there are some things that require the command line:

# Don't create .DS_Store files
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool true

# Disable auto-correct
defaults write -g NSAutomaticSpellingCorrectionEnabled -bool false

Finder Settings

1. Configure Preferences (Finder > Preferences):

   • In Sidebar, show the Home folder and hide the Recents folder
   • In Advanced, enable Show all filename extensions

2. Adjust Default View Options (View > Show View Options):

   • Set Sort By to Kind
   • Enable Show Item Info

Safari Settings

1. Adjust Preferences (Terminal > Preferences):

   • In Search, switch the default search engine.
   • In Advanced, turn on Show full website address and Show Develop menu in menu bar

2. Show Status Bar: View > Show Status Bar

Command Line Setup

Install the XCode Command Line Tools:

xcode-select --install

Install Homebrew:

curl -fsSL "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh" | bash

Install Applications:

brew tap homebrew/cask
brew install --cask google-chrome
brew install --cask firefox
brew install --cask discord

Fonts

Install Fira Code:

brew tap homebrew/cask-fonts
brew install --cask font-fira-code

Go to Terminal > Preferences and change the font to Fira Code Retina 11.

Terminal Shell

Install Fish Shell:

brew install fish

Set as default shell:

echo $(brew --prefix)/bin/fish | sudo tee -a /etc/shells
chsh -s $(brew --prefix)/bin/fish

Since it is a new shell, Homebrew is no longer in $PATH, so it needs to be re-added:

fish_add_path /opt/homebrew/bin

When opening a new terminal window, fish shows a welcome message. To disable this, run the following:

set -U fish_greeting ""

To make the terminal more interactive, install Starship:

brew install starship

Starship needs to be initialised on shell startup:

echo "starship init fish | source" > ~/.config/fish/config.fish

Setup Node.js

brew install node@14
fish_add_path /opt/homebrew/opt/node@14/bin

Install pnpm:

npm install -g pnpm

Install ni:

pnpm add -g @antfu/ni

Setup GitHub

Log in.

Install the GitHub CLI:

brew install gh

Login:

gh auth login

Setup Vercel

Log in.

Install the Vercel CLI:

pnpm add -g vercel

Link project:

vercel link

Fetch environmental variables:

vercel env pull

Setup VS Code

Install:

brew install --cask visual-studio-code

Install extensions:

• Nako
• VSCode Icons
• ESLint
• Prettier
• Stylelint
• GitLens

Setup Workspace

Create a projects/ directory:

mkdir ~/projects
echo "cd projects" >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish