Mac Setup

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

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This is the procedure I refer to when performing a clean (re)install on an Apple Macintosh, recently updated for MacOS Ventura.

Table of Contents

Settings Adjustments

System Settings

Once the initial setup procedure is done, customise the trackpad settings (System Settings > 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

Now move on to the Dock settings (View > Desktop & Dock):

  1. Automatically hide & show the Dock
  2. Do not show recent applications in Dock
  3. In Hot Corners, deactivate all shortcuts.

Finder Settings

  1. Configure Settings (Finder > Settings):

    • 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 Settings (Safari > Settings):

    • 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

System Settings

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

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

XCode Command Line Tools

  1. Install the XCode Command Line Tools:

    xcode-select --install

Homebrew Setup

  1. Install Homebrew

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

Terminal Shell

  1. Install Fish Shell:

    /opt/homebrew/bin/brew install fish

  2. Set Fish as default shell:

    echo /opt/homebrew/bin/fish | sudo tee -a /etc/shells
chsh -s /opt/homebrew/bin/fish

  3. 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

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

    set -g fish_greeting ""

  5. To make the terminal more interactive, install Starship:

    brew install starship

  6. Starship needs to be initialised on shell startup:

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

Fonts

  1. Open the Homebrew Cask Fonts tap

    brew tap homebrew/cask-fonts

  2. Install Fira Code

    brew install --cask font-fira-code

Go to Terminal > Settings and change the font to Fira Code.

Git

  1. Change Git credentials:

    git config --global --edit

GitHub CLI

  1. Log in to GitHub.

  2. Install the GitHub CLI

    brew install gh

  3. Login to the GitHub CLI

    gh auth login

Node.js

  1. Install Node.js:

    brew install node@16

  2. Configure Node for Fish

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

  3. Install pnpm:

    brew install pnpm

  4. Run the automatic setup script:

    pnpm setup

  5. Install ni:

    pnpm add -g @antfu/ni

Setup Workspace

  1. Create a projects/ directory

    mkdir ~/projects

  2. Set the directory as the starting point when opening a new shell

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

Vercel CLI

  1. Log in to Vercel

  2. Install the Vercel CLI

    pnpm add -g vercel

  3. Link current project

    vercel link

  4. Fetch environmental variables

    vercel pull

Applications Setup

brew tap homebrew/cask

Raycast

  1. Install Raycast

    brew install --cask raycast

  2. Open Raycast

  3. Disable Spotlight hotkey (System Settings > View > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Spotlight > Show Spotlight search)

  4. Set Raycast shortcut to cmd + space.

  5. In Raycast, go to Store and install the following extensions:

    • Brew
    • Kill Process
    • Lorem Ipsum
    • Speedtest

Visual Studio Code

  1. Install Visual Studio Code

    brew install --cask visual-studio-code

  2. Install global extensions:

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