Mac Setup

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

Table of Contents

• Settings Adjustments
  • System Settings
  • Finder Settings
  • Safari Settings
• Command Line Setup
  • XCode Command Line Tools
  • Homebrew Setup
  • Fonts
  • Terminal Shell
  • Node.js Setup
  • GitHub CLI Setup
  • Vercel CLI Setup
  • Setup Workspace
• Applications Setup
  • Install Applications
  • Raycast Setup
  • Visual Studio Code Setup

Settings Adjustments

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

XCode Command Line Tools

Install the XCode Command Line Tools:

xcode-select --install

Homebrew Setup

Install Homebrew:

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

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

Node.js Setup

brew install node@16
fish_add_path /opt/homebrew/opt/node@16/bin

Install pnpm:

npm install -g pnpm

Install ni:

pnpm add -g @antfu/ni

GitHub CLI Setup

Log in.

Install the GitHub CLI:

brew install gh

Login:

gh auth login

Vercel CLI Setup

Log in.

Install the Vercel CLI:

pnpm add -g vercel

Link project:

vercel link

Fetch environmental variables:

vercel env pull

Setup Workspace

Create a projects/ directory:

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

Applications Setup

Install Applications

brew tap homebrew/cask
brew install --cask raycast
brew install --cask visual-studio-code
brew install --cask google-chrome
brew install --cask firefox
brew install --cask discord

Raycast Setup

Disable Spotlight hotkey (System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Spotlight)

Set Raycast shortcut to cmd + space.

Visual Studio Code Setup

Install global extensions:

• Nako Theme
• VSCode Icons
• GitLens
• ESLint
• Prettier