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Sensible macOS Defaults
- Terretta 6y agoNot all of these changes are ‘sensible’ by default. Some original settings are useful belt-and-suspenders for flow blindness.
- cassianoleal 6y agoIndeed. More like "random person on the Internet's preferred macOS settings".
- wincy 6y agoI for one definitely think the whole world should set their timezone to Brussels. Seriously though, I like not having scrollbars everywhere, I use two fingers for right click on the track pad, I do it without thinking, if I turn off natural scrolling I get incredibly confused. Some of the stuff I can get behind, like this # Enable full keyboard access for all controls # (e.g. enable Tab in modal dialogs) defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleKeyboardUIMode -int 3 I get annoyed when secure keyboard entry turns on and doesn't turn off properly in iTerm as it messes up Dash's snippets. I'm sure this is the sensible defaults for this one really picky person, and it's interesting to see all the choices, but I would definitely advise against someone running this on their workstation blindly.
- simias 6y agoYeah "sensible defaults" doesn't make a lot of sense, it's way too opinionated. I could see using that as a starting template for some of my own preferences though. It's like reading somebody's vimrc, even if you don't care about 90% of it you might still find a few interesting tidbits that make your life easier.
- canjobear 6y agoI scrolled through the first few and every single one was either something I didn’t like or a bad idea.
- drivingmenuts 6y agoI stopped at Yosemite.
- bengale 6y agoI'm not sure I agree with much of these, which makes sense because this is definitely not 'sensible defaults' it is just someones preferred settings. I wouldn't copy this unless you know for sure this is how you want your system configured.
- akmarinov 6y agoIf you use these as they're written, you'll end up with a Brussels timezone, so yeah - definitely edit them beforehand.
- bengale 6y agoOne hour closer to quittin' time!
- linux2647 6y agoOr nine if you live on US west coast ;)
- rPlayer6554 6y agoSo if you have an 8hr work day does that mean your time left to work underflows and the company has to do an hour of work for you?
- chrisseaton 6y agoPresumably everyone thinks their own defaults are 'sensible', otherwise they wouldn't be using them. I think the most sensible defaults are those that come out of the box, rather than spending time tweaking things.
- bengale 6y ago> Presumably everyone thinks their own defaults are 'sensible', otherwise they wouldn't be using them. Maybe, although I set my caps lock up to be escape when tapped and control when held, I don't think that would be sensible for many people at all unless the knew why they wanted it. > I think the most sensible defaults are those that come out of the box, rather than spending time tweaking things. This is probably true, I find it very difficult to use anyone else's system since my config is non-standard.
- mrtksn 6y agoWouldn't be better to call this "cheat sheet"? macOS already has sensible defaults, that's how people who have no interest in dealing with computers can use their machines for years with no issues or servicing(unless a latte is spilled over the keyboard). Then, you can customise behaviour for some specific things to fit your workflow. The problem with diverging from defaults without putting much thought on it is that if you don't use it frequently you forget about it and when weird bugs happen it gets very hard to debug because a common issue with a straightforward solution may no longer apply to you and you have no idea why since you cannot make the connection because you don't remember changing it.
- garrtt 6y agoI agree that calling it sensible is subjective. Most of these I wouldn't even use myself, but I found it to be a good reference overall. I set the title for the post based on the how the creator references the file.
- raghavkhanna 6y agoPerhaps something to the tune of "How to customize macOS defaults" would be more appropriate then?
- moistbar 6y ago> Wouldn't be better to call this "cheat sheet"? Why would you call a script that actually changes things and doesn't actually show you a cheat sheet a "cheat sheet?"
- mrtksn 6y agoBecause the lines that do something are nicely categorized with documentation included. Instead of running it all, you can take a look what’s possible and apply it individually.
- moistbar 6y ago> Instead of running it all, you can take a look what’s possible and apply it individually. That's true of any script. The fact that this one is well commented doesn't make it not a script. A cheat sheet is something you hang on a wall and glance at every so often. A script is something you run to make changes to a system. You can't run a cheat sheet.
- carterschonwald 6y agoSome of these are not what I’d want, but sprinkled among them are some really cool gems
- singingwolfboy 6y agoThese have been extracted from the "dotfiles" repo and made into a standalone project: https://github.com/kevinSuttle/macOS-Defaults https://github.com/kevinSuttle/macOS-Defaults
- artonge 6y agoFrom the Reader: > Warning: If you want to give these dotfiles a try, you should first fork this repository, review the code, and remove things you don’t want or need. Don’t blindly use my settings unless you know what that entails. Use at your own risk!
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoI have some scripts that are super useful but also should not be used by somebody who doesn't know exactly what they're doing, so I literally stick a `exit 1` or such in the header so a teammate can't run the script without having looked at it first.
- skyzadev 6y agoThis. So many people in the comments complaining that they don't like or agree with the entire list. Find what you like and use it.
- jonnycomputer 6y agoIt looks like this is some person's set of config files, and for my part I find it useful to see how someone has set these OS configurations programmatically, but its quite opinionated, which is fine, but not exactly some kind of minimum set of defaults that most users would agree on--which OP suggests is the case.
- PascLeRasc 6y agoHow do people generally discover these default variables? Is there a manual from Apple or is it just exploratory?
- bronson 6y agoMostly manpages and experimentation. Here are some: https://github.com/kevinSuttle/macOS-Defaults/blob/master/REFERENCE.md https://github.com/kevinSuttle/macOS-Defaults/blob/master/RE...
- latexr 6y ago1. `defaults read > file_a`. 2. Change setting via GUI. 3. `defaults read > file_b`. 4. `diff file_a file_b`. If you already know the domain you want to change (like the bundle ID of a specific app), add it after `read`.
- anamexis 6y agoHow does one find all of these "defaults" settings? Is there a reference somewhere?
- garrtt 6y agodefaults read will show you all of them but it's a pretty long list
- larkost 6y agoThat also only shows you values that have been set. There can be values that are defaulted within the program itself that can be set, but do not have their default values written to any file, so do not show up in the `defaults` command except when set manually. Unfortunately, the usual way of finding those is to `strings` the application binary, and weed through all the chaff. And that requires either a fishing expedition, or for you to already know what you are looking for (including what binary might be responsible for that).
- saagarjha 6y agoReversing the binary to find calls to NSUserDefaults/CFPreferences.
- garrtt 6y agoFor clarity, I should point out that I don't believe that all of these defaults are "sensible" for every user. I gave the submission it's title because that is how the creator refers to the file.[0] [0] https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/tree/master#sensible-macos-defaults https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/tree/master#sensib...
- seanalltogether 6y agoI would think the audio prompt during system boot is a pretty critical piece of information if you ever have trouble starting your computer.
- gowld 6y agoIt's a Mac. If the computer doesn't start, take to a shop for an exchange.
- filleduchaos 6y agoOr plug in an external monitor (or other peripherals) like a normal person.
- jbirer 6y agoThis gives me the impression that command line configuration interface for MacOS is really good, at least compared to FreeBSD, Windows or Linux.
- johnvaluk 6y agoWhile it's true that there are many command line options available, I use a similar script to configure my Macs and it can be quite painful compared to Linux. First of all, this is a script, not a configuration file, so the changes only take effect when it is run, not when a user starts a session (though I suppose that could be done). There are any number of ways the settings can be changed and preserved without your knowledge, so you'll need to run the script periodically. I actually keep portions of the configuration state (nvram, defaults) in version control so I can audit changes. There are also a number of different commands (scutil, nvram, defaults, pmset, PlistBuddy, etc.) instead of common interface for things that seem related but aren't. Discoverability is horrible, even when you know the name of the setting you want to change. It is not immediately apparent what arguments are needed for "defaults write" based on the output of "defaults read" (possibly due to my own ignorance, but this raises the learning curve substantially). Granted, there are a thousand different ways to configure any given Linux environment with varying degrees of difficulty, but I feel like many of the user preferences in the linked script would be better managed in dotfiles as they are in Linux (and other Unices and even for many apps on Mac OS).
- kergonath 6y ago> First of all, this is a script, not a configuration file, so the changes only take effect when it is run, not when a user starts a session (though I suppose that could be done) I don’t think there is anything wrong with re-setting a bunch of properties in plist files every time a session is opened. You’re right, the CLI is a difficult to use if you don’t know it beforehand. And even knowing it does not tell you about the various properties you can change with default. At least the script here points to some useful options.
- lucideer 6y agoAs most of the comments here on HN are taking issue with the weirdly editorialised HN title, rather than with the content, it would be great if a moderator could change the title to something more accurate like "Mathias Bynens' macOS defaults"
- garrtt 6y agoI can change the title. I just set it to that because that is what Mathias calls it.
- kergonath 6y agoFWIW I’m not annoyed by the title. It just sounds tongue in cheek. Of course, it’s sensible to him because these are his settings.
- lucideer 6y agoHe does call them "sensible hacker defaults for macOS", which might get less criticism, but it's the repo title and there's no real indication that he's speaking to the general hacker public (and not privately to himself, as the "default hacker") Or does he use this phrase in some blog post? Either way it's not present on the linked file.
- auiya 6y agoI want literally none of these settings, how is this "sensible"?
- dsXLII 6y agoSorry, soon as I saw the line that disables the startup chime I knew everything here was wrong.
- johnvaluk 6y agoCan you elaborate? I despise the startup chime and disable it on all of my Macs. Why should they announce a startup when none of my other devices do? Why would I want to wake a sleeping baby or annoy other library patrons? This is one of the most obnoxious decisions Apple ever forced on its users (and, yes, I was happy when the illuminated logo on the laptop lid was finally put to rest).
- agloeregrets 6y agoIt’s intended originally to confirm boot, a real issue to solve back in the day. Some people get a warm nostalgia from it now. Not all choices need to be logical to improve a product for some.
- seanalltogether 6y agoBecause if you ever run into a problem where your computer doesn't turn on, the startup sound is your first indicator of whether the screen is faulty, or the board is faulty.
- aeturnum 6y agoI love that this document takes inscrutable OS X settings and translates them into familiar human-readable settings. I have no idea what "NSGlobalDomain NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode" is, but I understand what "Expand save panel by default" means. However, like other people, I'm not sure that I agree with this particular set of changes. Is there a project somewhere that packages these options into a GUI? I know a bunch of folks who use OS X who might want to change these things, but they're not programmers and they don't even know shell scripts exist.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kergonath 6y agoOnyx has a bunch of these: https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html It’s probably not exhaustive, but quite convenient.
- ttepasse 6y ago> Is there a project somewhere that packages these options into a GUI? There was: Secrets* was both a website were people aggregated a small database of these options and a MacOS preference pane which displayed these: https://web.archive.org/web/20150515104503/http://secrets.blacktree.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150515104503/http://secrets.bl... https://blog.taylormcgann.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/secrets-screenshot.png https://blog.taylormcgann.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/sec... (* by the makers of Quicksilver!) Sadly the project stopped updating in 2012 and the website, repository and forks seem all long gone. (Should anyone resurrect this great app, one improvement should be versioning of secrets recipes. AFAIR Secrets.prefPane displayed options long after they stopped applicable for later Mac OS versions.)
- eternalban 6y agoMB credits ptb's OS X setup: https://github.com/ptb/mac-setup https://github.com/ptb/mac-setup
- ezequiel-garzon 6y agoThis guy is great, I enjoyed his material on ____ ampersands in HTML, https://mothereff.in/ampersands https://mothereff.in/ampersands
- Maursault 6y agonitpik: I prefer to define the $PATH of every command used in a bash script to prevent some possible shenanigans. sudo="/usr/bin/sudo" launhctl="/bin/launchctl" scutil="/usr/sbin/scutil" nvram="/usr/sbin/nvram" defaults="/usr/bin/defaults" et cetera
- echohack5 6y agoSince APFS firmlinks these binaries you might be setting up some undesirable behavior, especially if a folder is set to read only. :) Most of the time you'll be ok though
- gugagore 6y agoI have not found a way to script the `Keyboard Preferences -> Input Sources` settings. I even versioned (in git) a ton of the `.plist` (property list) files in `~/Library/Preferences/` (they are binary files, but one can use `plutil` to get a textual XML representation). I think I arrived at the conclusion that these settings are persisted on a global / system level, and that there was basically no solution. I would be happy to be proven wrong! When I was starting from scratch with macOS a few months ago, I had that sense of fresh new beginning. I wanted to have all of the configuration scriptable and versioned. Unfortunately those preferences files also include a bunch of timestamps and dates and window locations, so it ends up being not a great idea.
- hk1337 6y ago> (they are binary files, but one can use `plutil` to get a textual XML representation) You can get a JSON representation now too. Figured that out with Safari bookmarks .webloc. They’re basically plist files and used plutil to convert it to JSON
- tingle 6y agoThis is a very useful list. Information on mac OS defaults is not easy to discover.
- echohack5 6y agoLove it! I always love seeing these and then stealing a few ideas for my own. Shameless sharing: github.com/echohack/macbot
- echohack5 6y agoLove it! I always steal a few ideas from these and add it to my own: github.com/echohack/macbot
- hollandheese 6y ago> # Trackpad: map bottom right corner to right-click This is the most monstrously non mac-like thing I’ve ever seen.
- Eric_WVGG 6y agoIt was a popular “hack” back in the days before two-fingered click detection. Probably not as efficient as ctrl-click, but that felt even less Mac-like at the time. A lot of these preferences seem to reflect the opinions of someone who would quite happily be stuck in 2005. Reverse scrolling… ugh.
- hollandheese 6y agoWeird. I can't remember anyone doing that back in the day, as it was super easy to just ctrl-click. This seems like a "hack" for former Windows users ("switchers"), where ctrl-click has been around since Mac OS 8.
- fit2rule 6y agoThis is nice, but for the MacOS users who have a hard time dealing with the terminal, I've lived by the Secrets prefpane for some years and find it most handy: https://github.com/ecnepsnai/Secrets https://github.com/ecnepsnai/Secrets
- chrisweekly 6y agoI love "dotfiles" in general, and IMHO this repo makes for excellent reference material. There's always something more to learn, and IME (paid to use computers since 1998) time spent improving your tools is usually well-spent. Of course tinkering can be a rabbit hole or time-sink of a hobby, but leveraging others' expertise (via dotfiles repos like Mathias's) can mitigate that risk. More generally, taking the time to grok the system you depend on -- and shaping it to your liking -- is one of the most sensible things you can do.
- vondur 6y agoSo these settings are on a per user basis, or do they take effect system wide?
- thought_alarm 6y agoThe sudo commands are system settings, the rest are user account settings.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sneak 6y agoDisabling natural-direction scrolling isn't sensible. It's the first thing I fix on all other OSes. Why should the content go the opposite direction of the way I'm moving my finger? This is one of the best fixes Apple ever made, back in Lion. Kudos to them to seeing the everyday and noticing that it was wrong.
- gegtik 6y agoThis opinion betrays a lack of imagination. There are two equally valid subjective choices here: - does moving your finger up "grab the content" under the glass and move it up, or - does moving your finger up "grab the window", moving it up along a long virtual document? Both are legit mental models, it's a preference.
- samatman 6y agoThis is configurable almost everywhere it is encountered, and there's a reason for that! It's the same dilemma as panning a first-person-perspective camera up and down. Some people think that down should move the perspective, some people think that down should move the camera: so pushing the joystick down should move the viewing window up. These physical intuitions are durable and hard to change. I grimly endured the difference between a trackpad and a phone until OS X (as it was then known) switched to the "correct" default, but I'm one of those people who expects a camera to work like the control stick of a plane: pulling towards me, or down, should elevate the perspective. I purchased a gimbal recently, and was having a terrible time controlling it until I realized that the default (pushing the joystick up points the camera up) could be overridden. I don't think there's anything "sensible" in a general way about anyone's custom configuration script, frankly, and I suspect the person who made this wasn't actually trying to promote it for public consumption, and just meant "script to make my computer do what I consider sensible".
- spankalee 6y agoIt'd be awesome if this could help with two anti-user innovations in recent macOS: 1) Disable Apple Music, which has the annoying habit of opening every time I touch my headphones, and is not removable from my own computer. 2) Force macOS to remember that I gave Chrome location permissions instead of reseting Chrome after every update.
- dcow 6y agoSafari does this too.. Apple is on some horse about requiring user intervention for every single location request even from sites you’ve already allowed in the past. It’s annoying.
- spankalee 6y agomacOS does not forget that Safari has location permissions. In fact, they're enabled by default. Chrome however has its location permissions reset so often that they had to add a feature to tell users it was off again.
- CGamesPlay 6y agoI think the only button on the dialog is like "rememberer for one day" or something, right? Once you've clicked that, go to preferences -> websites -> locations, change the affected site to "deny" and then "allow", and it's permanent.
- sneak 6y agoHere are mine, for comparison: https://git.eeqj.de/sneak/osx/src/branch/master/custompkg/root/etc/skel/Library/user-setup/000.set-user-preferences.sh https://git.eeqj.de/sneak/osx/src/branch/master/custompkg/ro...
- smoldesu 6y agoThis is part of the reason I switched to Linux. I've heard so many people say "Linux is free only if you don't value your time" and then turn around and write one of these. If I'm going to go through the trouble of customizing an operating system to fit my needs, I may as well do it with a free and open system rather than MacOS, which can change for the worse at any moment (the dealbreaker for me was dropping 32 bit support). I spent 2 days getting my dotfiles spruced up, and now I can bootstrap any fresh Linux install by curling a script from my website and running it. On MacOS, it felt like I was constantly discovering things I didn't like, only to have the system fight me when I wanted to change it.
- herrkanin 6y agoRealistically, the person who compiled this script file to make the OS behave exactly how they desire is very different from the kind of person who says "Linux is free only if you don't value your time". Personally, I like to keep to the defaults and prefer to change my own workflow to match the OS designers' vision of how I should use a computer, rather than to try to bend the OS to my priors. I understand why this don't work for everyone, but it has made my life much easier.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoThis! I just get used to the defaults. When I change computers, no extra work for me. Contrast my business partner, who spends 2 days loading and configuring each new computer.
- notsureaboutpg 6y agoHow is it not extra work for you? As someone who is getting used to MacOS now for work, it's taken me more than a week to feel productive with the defaults...
- doctor_eval 6y agoAbsolutely! I thought I was the only one who felt this way. I used to customise everything “back in the day” and then I’d change machine or have to use someone else’s - and all my muscle memory would be lost. These days the only thing I customise is the “refactor” shortcut in IDEA because the Fn keys suck on MacOS.
- easton 6y agoThis reminded me a bit of messing around with TinkerTool around 10.4-10.5 times, and to my surprise, it's still supported with a Big Sur compatible release! https://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html https://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html
- spaetzleesser 6y agoA little unrelated but this hits one of my pet peeves. Why do people give things generic names that have basically no meaning? If I encountered the script in machine I would wonder “WTF does .macos do?” There is also no comment in the header. I see that at work too. People give lists of certain element types the name “list”. So a lot of their code is full of classes with generic names like “map”, “list” or “config” and every time you have to look at the code and see what the thing really does. Do people not work on large codebases?
- bondolo 6y agoIn the spirit of this post, for those using Java for development on MacOS, I'll share my .zprofile which sets up a reasonable Java environment for working in the shell. https://gist.github.com/bondolo/5ce1a1c0d38e72a80a79ac28f951c9a5 https://gist.github.com/bondolo/5ce1a1c0d38e72a80a79ac28f951...
- dreamcompiler 6y agoI already use many of these and have learned several more good tips from reading this script. In recent years Apple's default settings have trended more and more away from what keyboard-focused power users (i.e. developers) need, IMHO. That wouldn't be a big deal except they've also trended toward locking down those defaults to make them difficult to change. Scripts like this make it possible for me to continue doing development on the Mac without tearing my hair out.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoSensible for who? I wouldn't want many of these settings, and, for example, my parents would want almost none of them. These kind of scripts are almost never a good idea.
- dhosek 6y agoI do my best to not change defaults on systems that I use. It ends up being a pain point any time I go to some other computer and have to deal with my extensions/customizations not being there. Something needs to be a big productivity gain to merit the change (or else be a trivial modification, like disabling caps lock).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- maxfurman 6y agoThis is neat! I had no idea so much of macOS was configurable at the cli. That said, I am very nervous to try these commands because I'm not sure what the original default is - so if I don't like any option I have no idea how to set it back! Short of an OS reinstall, I suppose. I can see why Mathias would want to preserve these - it's not any weirder than checking in your emacs.d folder.
- wlll 6y agoI'd greatly prefer a title such as "Mac OS defaults I prefer". I read the first page or so and honestly didn't find any that I would actually want. Labelling these "sensible" then suggests that the alternatives rather than just being personal choice are somehow not sensible, and who other than a fool would choose something that's not sensible? Well me it seems, and I feel like the patronising title is implying that I am one.
- garrtt 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26514195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26514195 I would have titled it differently had the creator not referred to the file as such. I even tried changing the title earlier today (I don’t particularly like it either), but it got changed back. Apologies!
- _def 6y agothe sudo loop is really dangerous
- NaturalPhallacy 6y agoHow so? I was suspicious too at first, so I read it pretty meticulously and saw that it's not any worse than the rest of it.
- rgovostes 6y agoprefsniff is a tool that can monitor defaults changes on macOS if you want to see what default key underlies a particular setting: https://github.com/zcutlip/prefsniff https://github.com/zcutlip/prefsniff
- supernintendo 6y ago> Disable the sound effects on boot As someone who grew up using an old school Mac in the 90s, this is blasphemy! That triumphant chime is essential to the Macintosh experience (just kidding but kinda not).
- m463 6y agoWhen I read this I thought - A kindred spirit: # Disable automatic capitalization as it’s annoying when typing code # Disable smart dashes as they’re annoying when typing code # Disable automatic period substitution as it’s annoying when typing code # Disable smart quotes as they’re annoying when typing code # Disable auto-correct ... but then I saw this - # Allow the App Store to reboot machine on macOS updates I assume this after you manually started the update, otherwise it is madness!
- GekkePrutser 6y agoYeah I saw that, it's basically the status quo on Windows though :( Happens all the time that people return from a break and find their machine decided to reboot. Luckily on Managed PCs you can stop this from happening.
- aranelsurion 6y agoI keep a Windows machine around for mainly games, and this is the very first thing I'd do on a new Windows installation. Run "gpedit.msc", find the "automatic updates" policy and disable everything. Then it only sends you a notification once in a while, and that's it. afaik you can do this on Win10 Pro and above.
- b0afc375b5 6y agoI'd like to emphasize the smart quotes. It's terribly awful, at least from my point of view. Copy-pasting code has never been more dreadful.
- restingrobot 6y agowow, i've been using this for years, (it was originally pulled from an old Ribot prep script). Glad to see this finally getting some love.
- sajithdilshan 6y agoHow come having Brussels timezone by default is a sensible default, unless you live in that timezone?
- NaturalPhallacy 6y agoLots of cool stuff in there, but if you run this without heavy editing you're an fool.
- lnwlebjel 6y agoThis is the best one: # Display full POSIX path as Finder window title defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool true I don't know how anyone knows where their stuff is without it.
- ataylor32 6y agoHold the command key while clicking the title of the Finder window
- librarianscott 6y agoDo you mean the collapsed titlebar/toolbar that is the default in Big Sur?
- ataylor32 6y agoYes, and it works in previous versions of macOS as well
- bartvk 6y agoWow, that's extremely useful! There is an alternative, in the Finder view menu -> Show Path Bar. It's displayed at the bottom. This will display the path of the current selection, or -- if nothing is selected -- the currently opened folder.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoWow nice, this is a really great find. I know of some of those but never have seen them all together. I'm sure I won't consider the exact same set to fit my needs fully, but that doesn't matter as they're really well documented.
- bogidon 6y agoForked from these a while ago for the macOS part of dotfiles. My dotfiles support both macOS and Linux, and most of my configurations are also extensible on the local machine only though ~/.zshrc_local, ~/.gitconfig_local, etc (which in turn load private dotfiles I wrote for my company machines, but I digress) Here they are in case you're into the dotfile trading thing: https://github.com/bogidon/dotfiles https://github.com/bogidon/dotfiles
- zumu 6y agoWhile we're here, there's a couple things on a mac I haven't been able to figure out how to do, and maybe some of you mac pros can give me answers. 1) Remove the dock (killing the dock automatically restarts it) 2) Remove all desktop icons (Killing Finder accomplishes this, but they reappear as soon as you need to open something in Finder) Stuff like the above is why I greatly prefer Linux.
- influx 6y ago"Remove the dock": $ defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float 1000 && killall Dock
- zumu 6y agoI'm already using the 'autohide-delay' trick, but random randomly icons from the hidden dock will start bouncing and I can see the dock when I do the mission control view or whatever they call it. On Snow Leopard you could actually kill the dock and it'd stay killed.
- skunkworker 6y agoIt's really simple to have no desktop icons on the Mac. Just open the finder settings and under General untick all of the boxes to show on the desktop. Then move everything out of the ~/Desktop folder. It won't have anything on it after that. As for the dock you can set it to auto hide, and change the delay so that it will come up but after N seconds [1]. [1] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/59556/is-there-a-way-to-completely-disable-dock https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/59556/is-there-a-w...
- zumu 6y agoI will try the finder changes, but I have my doubts crap won't randomly appear in my ~/Desktop folder automagically. As for the dock, auto-hiding it doesn't disable it, it just hides it. So it remains visible in mission control, and still has bouncing icons from time to time. It also uses system resources, etc. Ideally I wouldn't have to hack around these settings and could just turn off both these features, like I could on Snow Leopard.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y agoThere’s a couple defaults (e.g. always show scroll bars) I don’t change because, as a web developer, I need my browsing experience to be “typical”. But, overall, this is a very interesting list of things.
- hk1337 6y agoSeems kind of weird to put these in a dotfile. They’re settings you run once not settings for a terminal session. I could see putting it in .macos if that was something the system used on boot to setup your system a particular way.
- martini333 6y agoopinionated macOS defaults