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My MacBook Setup (the 2024 version)

82 points by maoxiaoke 3y ago

biddit 3y ago
> Setting up a new Macbook will be tough and cumbersome. Every time I get a new Macbook, I go over the same steps on how to set it up for my working experience. Huh? My last several hardware upgrades I just plugged in my Time Machine drive and everything is migrated within 1-2 hours.
- sgt 3y ago
  That's fine yeah but sometimes you want a truly clean setup. Basically using it as an excuse to get rid of stuff you don't need.
  - boringg 3y ago
    That makes sense but that makes it a personal choice to then go through setting the whole thing up from scratch.
  - mynameisvlad 3y ago
    Even with that, there’s more than enough tools out there to automate setup. For example, I use https://www.chezmoi.io/ https://www.chezmoi.io/ which creates a standard home directory set up (prompt etc), decrypts SSH keys and other private stuff, and installs a bunch of tooling through brew/apt.
  - dangus 3y ago
    A “clean setup” is so overemphasized. It has no advantage other than wasting your own time.
    - twodave 3y ago
      Different people lose energy from different tasks. I.e. it may not tax your mind to have clutter around, but it can be a distraction for someone else. For some people (like me), clutter is fine but starting on a task takes a lot of energy. The important thing is knowing and accommodating for yourself to get the best results.
      - dangus 3y ago
        But you could just remove things from your existing install rather than starting all over. It really isn’t about clutter. The “clean install” thing is a habit from when old Windows would have phantom issues if you didn’t start over every so often.
    - Erratic6576 3y ago
      There are many tools I wish I had never installed. I’m now installing them on a VM first
- bloopernova 3y ago
  Unfortunately some macs may be within a corporate environment and thus are unable to use an external drive, so no Time Machine.
  - piva00 3y ago
    My work MacBooks have the migration assistant disabled by MDM, it's a pain in the ass to swap, I can live with them for 3-4 years though so not a big problem, just annoying. For my personal Macs the migration assistant is fantastic, never had a hiccup and when I boot the new machine after migration is almost exactly like the old one, except for having to re-authorise some music software.
- Brajeshwar 3y ago
  These days, besides the dotfiles and few minimal settings that I remember, I just let it go as I go along. In about a month or so, it all gets to where I want.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    This is what I tend towards too. It helps that my setup isn’t too deeply customized (for example I think the only UserDefaults change I make is to add a Quit menu item to the Finder’s app menu), so even defaults are reasonably usable.
- pprotas 3y ago
  You can also set most of these options in a shell script, here is my (shitty and outdated, but it proves the point) script https://github.com/pprotas/dotfiles/blob/main/osconfig.sh https://github.com/pprotas/dotfiles/blob/main/osconfig.sh Just run the shellscript when you get a new macos device
- ed_balls 3y ago
  If you upgrade from Intel to Apple Silicon skip apps sync. Too many issues.
  - tiltowait 3y ago
    First I’ve heard anyone say this. FWIW, I experienced no issues, and I’ve been using migration assistant since my first (well, second, I suppose) Mac (I recently found an old config file dated 2007!).
    - ed_balls 3y ago
      I went from 2017 Intel to 2024 M3 Max I had problems with Homebrew and some apps installed through it (crashing). I couldn't compile one DLL. I had to reinstall Command line tools. Deleted one electron app - couldn't be bother. I also noticed two binaries (one was Python) running in x86 mode via Rosetta. It was slow. Another reinstall. You can check Kind in Activity Monitor (apple/intel)
dbuxton 3y ago
It's such a pain keeping track of all the `defaults write xxx` stuff when Apple updates. My current setup here in case useful to anyone: https://gist.github.com/dbuxton/3ccdfd88b05e1f2807c05fe32f5078b7 https://gist.github.com/dbuxton/3ccdfd88b05e1f2807c05fe32f50... (If anyone knows how to show bluetooth in top menu all the time on Sonoma I'd love to learn - haven't done much investigation but option seems to have disappeared in the UI...)
- OJFord 3y ago
  I was so glad to remove all that (and to a lesser extent, trying to maintain both Homebrew package names and pacman/AUR names for everything, which obviously sometimes differ or need a different thing anyway) when I started using a Linux machine for work (already did personally). That might change again unfortunately; I'm hoping some day Nix or something like it is a cross-platform solution, but I don't think it's there yet. Discovering the `defaults` options (or worse: what you're setting that no longer does anything) is a nightmare.
- mckn1ght 3y ago
  Can you still drag it from control center to the menu bar? I haven’t upgraded to Sonoma yet so I can’t test it.
KAdot 3y ago
> After discovering Chrome are eating my old Mac's battery, I turned to using Edge What? Have they tried using Safari instead of a Chromium based browser? From my experience Safari is by far the best browser on Mac in terms of the energy efficiency.
- Guillaume86 3y ago
  He does front end dev.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    Aside from testing multiple browsers, that'd make me think you want Chrome or Firefox primarily, if any difference at all they probably have best/most tooling?
    - jwells89 3y ago
      All of the Chrome-clones (Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Arc, etc) have identical dev tooling and extension support because they’re all just Chrome with mostly-surface-level tweaks applied.
      - OJFord 3y ago
        I didn't realise Edge was such. Why would it make any significant difference to energy usage then?
      - hollerith 3y ago
        "Identical extension support" is untrue: Brave is a Chrome clone, and it intends to keep supporting manifest v2.
  - timeon 3y ago
    If you test for Safari+Firefox it would probably work in chrome as well.
- sgt 3y ago
behnamoh 3y ago
I think in 2024 there must be a better way to automatically get your new Mac to the state of your previous Mac.
- dangus 3y ago
  It’s been available for years/decades. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102613 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102613
- alsetmusic 3y ago
  Migration Assistant does this quite well. This is the built-in first-run cloning tool when you start a new Mac. I'm on maybe the fifth or sixth generation of cloned user environment in however many years. Apps, preferences, data, all copied from older machines to newer ones. I recently ran into a scenario where that didn't work (on an iPhone) when a device is managed by MDM. This is the first time I've seen it fail other than 15 years ago on an edge case. For a Mac, Homebrew has an option (or maybe another tool leverages it) to create a manifest of sorts to reinstall all the right tools. That's a bit different. I know that Casey Liss, of the Accidental Tech Podcast (https://www.caseyliss.com https://www.caseyliss.com, https://atp.fm https://atp.fm) has talked about it on his blog. I just woke up, so apologies for not finding it for you.
  - ngcazz 3y ago
    `brew bundle`?
    - mckn1ght 3y ago
      more specifically, `brew bundle dump`
  - behnamoh 3y ago
    But what about all the settings you changed in the OS preferences? What about app-specific configs? What about conda environments you've created? What about all the symlinks you made to make apps read configs from Google Drive, etc.?
xnyanta 3y ago
Pretty sure nix-darwin + its homebrew integration could set up 99% of this with a pull of your configuration repo and a single installation command.
- mark38848 3y ago
  After fiddling with it for months, potentially
  - execat 3y ago
    You might be over-estimating how long it takes to write a Nix config. Just start with a reasonable Nix config and take it from there by comparing with nix-darwin and home-manager configuration pages. I know people who did it over a weekend.
- notso411 3y ago
  [dead]
- Cyph0n 3y ago
  Never used nix-darwin, but if it’s even a fraction as capable as NixOS, I believe it.
- dlyons 3y ago
  Shameless plug: I maintain a Nix for MacOS configuration starter that has a step by step guide on getting started (725+ stars). https://github.com/dustinlyons/nixos-config https://github.com/dustinlyons/nixos-config
amardeep 3y ago
Just a shout out to nix-darwin[1]. It is nix, so initial setup is a bit involved. But then it truly makes it easy to configure everything in one place including mac defaults, homebrew apps declaratively and mas apps etc. There is a sample config in nix-darwin repo[2]. [1] https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin [2] https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/blob/master/modules/examples/lnl.nix https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/blob/master/modules/examp...
- okkdev 3y ago
  I skip nix-darwin and use just home-manager. Does all I need. Don't really see the point of adding nix-darwin.
- bsnnkv 3y ago
  This is also my favorite way of setting up MacBooks. I love being able to set up all my Linux, macOS and Windows[1] machines from a single flake. [1]: https://lgug2z.com/articles/managing-dotfiles-on-windows-11-with-nixos/ https://lgug2z.com/articles/managing-dotfiles-on-windows-11-...
- behnamoh 3y ago
  Sounds too much hassle for something you want to come back to every few years, when the nix commands and procedure have changed anyway.
nickjj 3y ago
I only use a Mac for work through a company laptop but one thing I recently discovered is the world clock widget which is accessed through your clock. You can show up to 4 different times besides your local time. This is really handy to see the time in UTC and other timezones where some of your team mates might exist. This saves having to Google for timezone converters.
- Bishonen88 3y ago
  alternatively one can use an alfred plugin like this one: https://github.com/jaroslawhartman/TimeZones-Alfred https://github.com/jaroslawhartman/TimeZones-Alfred. That's what I'm using since a few years
- atymic 3y ago
  I find Clocker excellent for this, unified time scroller as well https://apps.apple.com/au/app/clocker/id1056643111?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/au/app/clocker/id1056643111?mt=12 (free)
- nkristoffersen 3y ago
  You can actually create multiple widgets of the same type. So as many timezones or cities you want to track you can just keep adding timezone widgets.
  - nickjj 3y ago
    Good to know. In my case I happened to need exactly 4 so it worked out with the default set up. I like the easy access of it, just click your clock and boom in 1 second you have instant access to these. I even ordered mine based on relative closeness to my time. For example: My local time is EST. The extra 4 clock widget has UTC, Poland, India and Australia which are all +X hours ahead of EST in that order.
- Terretta 3y ago
  While we're sharing time zone tools, World Time Buddy is beautiful UX and richly functional: Site: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ Features: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/features https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/features Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.helloka.worldtimebuddy https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.helloka.wo... iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/time-buddy-easy-time-zones/id719765848 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/time-buddy-easy-time-zones/id7... And easy to add to your web site: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/clock-widget https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/clock-widget
dieulot 3y ago
> For GFW reasons, the Chinese users will fail to connect to github. Since when has GitHub been blocked in China? I thought the government reluctantly let it pass.
al_borland 3y ago
>Step 1: Enable tap to click We are very different people. Tap to click is the bane of my existence. I can’t work on a system that has that enabled.
- behnamoh 3y ago
  I think people who want more control disable it. It's annoying when it accidentally clicks on things.
  - uldos 3y ago
    I just tried to enable it for 10 minutes and I will never enable it again. This is also a reason why I can not work on non mac laptop trackpads - they are unreliable, accident taps happens all the time.
    - jagged-chisel 3y ago
      I use tap-to-click, two-finger tap to right-click, three-finger drag for dragon drop operations. Never noticed an accidental click. I do, however, see canceled clicks often (I clicked, the item I touched changes color, but nothing happens.) Since I’m here, same thing happens on iPad and iPhone - touch, color change, no action.
- daemonologist 3y ago
  I enable tap to click on those "diving board" style touchpads if I'm going to be using the system for long stretches without a mouse - the amount of force needed and top-to-bottom variability of the diving board drives me nuts. I'd definitely rather have a modern haptic trackpad though.
  - al_borland 3y ago
    I never found the diving boards bad, but I think that is due to starting to use trackpads back when they had physical buttons under them, and I never changed my technique. I use my index finger to move around, and my thumb hangs out near the bottom of the pad for when I need to click. I’m not sure how else I’d do things like a click and drag operation. The whole double tap and drag thing always seemed pretty error prone for me.
mstipetic 3y ago
I would pay a lot of money for a good tiling wm for a mac, not sure how it's not a thing. It's one of the main reasons I keep going back to linux, everything else I don't care about much
- thfuran 3y ago
  At least windows has fancy zones. Mac's window management is just sad.
- kuchenbecker 3y ago
  I use BetterSnapTool, which is $4. You can divide the screen however you want and hotkey to them.
  - mckn1ght 3y ago
    Same with Moom.
    - mstipetic 3y ago
      those are not tiling wms
      - mckn1ght 3y ago
        Why not? You can essentially emulate the capability with Moom as long as you memorize the necessary shortcuts. I have a mnemonic representation of the location/size of window targets on my keyboard.
- gomox 3y ago
  I use Rectangle (free). Does the trick well enough.
- stoniejohnson 3y ago
  It exists! Check out [yabai](https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai), which is nicely paired with [skhd](https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd).
goodlinks 3y ago
Would be interested to see this for win 11. I recently got a new machine and was surprised how may little things i must have done to my last. Turning off file grouping, basically every option for the start menu. Actually now that i think about it its mostly just find every option that can be turned off and turn it off.
- goodlinks 3y ago
  To be honest, would be interested in seeing this for any OS
- jwells89 3y ago
  Don’t have a full guide, but winget is your friend for quickly setting up Windows and has come installed by default for a while now. Lets you install most popular software through the command line, which is much nicer than wandering around the internet downloading installers.
- Unfrozen0688 3y ago
  Note, all this may not be allowed if this is your managed work device. Here is some of my stuff I do. In general: Turn Windows updates ON!! DO NOT use any "debloater" scripts!! You can use a local account if you login with no@outlook.com and any password or something. https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/11/how-to-set-up-windows-11-without-a-microsoft-account/ https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/11/how-to-set-up-windows-11-w... In the Windows Settings just dick around a bit and play around with what you like. There is a Dev section, I turn on everything for EXCEPT RDP incoming connections. Win11 - This video shows how to restore a lot of stuff from Win10 they removed. And good stuff to disable in settings as you please. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL-RTGQ3iQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL-RTGQ3iQk "Godmode" folder shows you a lot of hidden settings https://www.howtogeek.com/402458/enable-god-mode-in-windows-10/ https://www.howtogeek.com/402458/enable-god-mode-in-windows-... Verbose login - Shows more detail on login and logoff https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/132125-enable-verbose-logon-messages-in-windows-10 https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/132125-enable-verbos... Remove Aero Shake https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-7/disable-aero-shake-in-windows-7/ https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-7/disable-aero-shake... Mmc.exe - old but good Sounds - Windows startup sound turn on Device manager - Turn off network card sleep Set DNS to Cloudflare for Families or ControlD for filtering O&O Shutup to turn off a lot of spyware shit https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 Applications: Microsoft Sysinternals Suite - Process Explorer is a way better task manager and psexec to run things as SYSTEM. Firefox + ublock origin. Can set as defualt browser now when Firefox asks. Notepad++ and Notepad2 ShareX - screenshots Eartrumpet - Volume management ModernFlyouts - Volume, Caps lock notification etc. Just way nicer than default. Twinkle Tary - Adjust monitor brithness with app TranclucentTB - Windows 10, adjust taskbar. Microsoft Powertoys - A tonne of extra programs and settings, program launcher, caffeine to prevent sleep etc. Mouse without borders - control several PCs with one keyboard and mouse. Works best over wiered network. Microsoft made. Free. Quicklook - Preview files with Spacebar like MacOS. CoreTemp - Temp and load monitor, also get hwmonitor and hwinfo 7zip - Zip,RAR etc Everything - Searches well, everything, way better on a Windows machine. Also go to Ninite.com and install stuff from there. No need for antivirus besides Defender unless you already have a paid one you like/company installed. A lot from here https://www.neowin.net/news/top-11-apps-every-windows-11-user-should-have/ https://www.neowin.net/news/top-11-apps-every-windows-11-use... Yes, the power of Windows!!
synergy20 3y ago
job mandates a macbook, had no choice besides changing the job, which I will do later. one thing bugs me the most, as a linux user, is that copy and paste by mouse middle button, now I have to use mouse to select it, then cmd+v to paste it, what a hassle. of course I changed that scroll down instead of scroll up thing, I don't want to move up the bar to move down the page, that's just odd. click to close windows does not really close the apps also bothers me. Apple is such a closed company nowadays, worse than Microsoft from the past in fact, made me hard to love it, thus those nitpicks becomes issues for me.
- bitvoid 3y ago
  > of course I changed that scroll down instead of scroll up thing, I don't want to move up the bar to move down the page, that's just odd. That's because the scrolling behavior with the mouse is annoyingly tied to the scrolling behavior of the trackpad, where the "natural scrolling" makes sense as a default because it's like you're moving the page up (similar to a phone) with two fingers rather than scrolling. I hate having to constantly change it in the settings as I'm switching between trackpad and mouse. The settings need to be separated. Just let me have natural scrolling with the trackpad and regular scrolling when I'm using a mouse without needing to open the damn settings app.
  - beezoo 3y ago
    There’s a small app called Scroll Reverser which allows you to have a different setting for the trackpad and mouse. Not sure why we need a separate app for this, but it does work.
    - behnamoh 3y ago
      No need for an app. You can change the mouse scroll direction right in the settings.
      - jagged-chisel 3y ago
        And it doesn’t affect the trackpad? That’s the problem: switching it for one switches it for both.
uldos 3y ago
I don't think I can trust someone who suggests installing edge on mac...
- dime 3y ago
  He's a frontend dev, so part of the job. Not everyone has the luxury to write off/skip QA for Edge.
  - madeofpalk 3y ago
    Frontend developer. Never tested in Edge. I primarily develop and use Firefox. Rarely is a cross-browser compat issue reported, but if it does that we can test + fix on the go.
- outside1234 3y ago
  Why? What would you choose? It is actually a pretty good browser.
  - vinni2 3y ago
    Firefox
- prepend 3y ago
  I use it on my Mac and like it ok. My main browsers are Safari and Brave. Then Chrome for google stuff only. Then Edge. Then Firefox. I was a primary Firefox for many years and finally gave up about 3-4 years ago when it just got too bloaty and buggy to bother. This might have been when I discovered Brave, but not sure. Anyway, Edge didn’t seem so weird to me at all.
- CincinnatiMan 3y ago
  Edge has native vertical tabs. Killer feature.
whatever1 3y ago
It is unbelievable how bad window management is at macos. Specially if you use multiple desktops it's impossible to not kill your workflow with the inconcistencies. You press a dock icon and you have no clue if it will open a new window in the current desktop or if it will switch to another desktop and show you an already open window.
- Lawand 3y ago
  [dead]
- jwells89 3y ago
  I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a program that opens a new window when other windows are already open on some other desktop/monitor. The behavior I always see is switching to the desktop with the window, with multiple dock icon clicks cycling through each desktop that program has windows on.
  - whatever1 3y ago
    You have to remember if there is a window open in any of the desktops, because the dock does not even provide info on this. It just tells you that it has a program in memory, like it can help my workflow. Dock in macos is a useless process manager, not a taskbar.
    - asystole 3y ago
      I like macOS's window management in general but this is a good point. The dot indicators on the dock tell you whether an application is running, which on macOS doesn't necessarily mean it has any windows open. Clicking a dock icon results in a different action based on whether the application does have open windows, which is not visually indicated.
- daemonologist 3y ago
  My window management style changes completely when I switch operating systems - on Windows I use the taskbar (with actual named windows, not just the default icons), because the desktop switching and "overview"/view all windows feature are atrociously laggy. On Mac and Linux (Gnome), as you say, the dock is useless for finding your windows so I make extensive use of desktops and the overview, which both perform flawlessly.
y0ssar1an 3y ago
Raycast > Alfred Warp > iTerm https://www.raycast.com https://www.raycast.com https://www.warp.dev https://www.warp.dev
- kilroy123 3y ago
  I've wanted to try raycast but too lazy as I've already paid for Alfred. How does it compare? What about custom workflows? I have a bunch already created.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    Alfred is ridiculously lightweight and well-optimized, too, which is something a lot of newer software struggles with.
- asystole 3y ago
  Raycast is great, I agree. Warp... last time I tried it (very recently) it wanted me to log in before I could use it. Log in. To a terminal emulator.
  - imbnwa 3y ago
    >Warp... last time I tried it (very recently) it wanted me to log in before I could use it. Log in. To a terminal emulator Unforgivable
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  > Raycast > Alfred $10/month for some of the things Alfred offers, perhaps not.
- SushiHippie 3y ago
  For me alacritty >> other terminal emulators on macos. Not because it does have cool features, but because it is not as laggy [0] as the others and comes close to Terminal.app but supports 256colors [0] i'm normally a linux user and use "foot" as my terminal emulator, and the terminal emulators there are so much more responsive than on macos/windows
hakunin 3y ago
I used to have fancy long config files full of default writes, but every MacOS update changes so many things that it’s borderline stressful to run the file ever again. Things break in weird ways. The config ends up only being useful for the one time I setup this machine, and not the next. So my new approach: an Apple note where I just write down any settings I tweak manually in UI. If they ever relocate, I will find them in another place. I also write down any custom setup I do (like cron, etc). I also keep an iCloud dir of various software configs, and a Brewfile for all the software installs. I haven’t tried transitioning from this setup yet, but hopefully it’s much more straightforward, albeit a bit time consuming (it’s always time consuming).
nhggfu 3y ago
thanks for this OP.
zeroDivisible 3y ago
I've got a bunch of Ansible scripts, written in around 2013 or so - and then constantly tweaked over the years. Code quality isn't the greatest, but I've been using them to provision a bunch of laptops, Linux PCs, etc. They work good enough that I didn't search for a replacement yet. There's always a thing which needs fixing with these scripts, which is to be expected for something which is only fired every so often. Hardest part of using them is remembering to do any config changes in Ansible repos and not directly in config files. I have diverging logic, branching off usernames and group memberships to treat given machine as "personal" or "work" - and then configure certain settings differently. I'm using ansible-vault for secrets like SSH keys, etc. New machine provisioning is usually just installation of a package manager (if not present, like brew), and installation of Ansible.
samatman 3y ago
I always enjoy this sort of "here's how I set up my computer" post/repo. I just switched to WezTerm, but now I know that there's Warp. One of these weekends I'll have to take it for a spin. But setting up a new Mac? I follow the instructions on the welcome screen and plug in the old one. It works perfectly as far as I can tell, I'd have to count to figure out how many laptops I've migrated from one to the other but it's a solid decade of getting my exact setup running on a new machine with no tweaks necessary. I've never felt the urge to make a fresh start. I did have to purge Python libraries when I switched to the M-series processors, that was a pain in the butt to figure out. Other than that, smooth sailing.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fragmede 3y ago
aldente.app for battery life contexts.app for sane alt-tab behavior

82 points by maoxiaoke 3y ago

> Setting up a new Macbook will be tough and cumbersome. Every time I get a new Macbook, I go over the same steps on how to set it up for my working experience. Huh? My last several hardware upgrades I just plugged in my Time Machine drive and everything is migrated within 1-2 hours.

sgt 3y ago
That's fine yeah but sometimes you want a truly clean setup. Basically using it as an excuse to get rid of stuff you don't need.
- boringg 3y ago
  That makes sense but that makes it a personal choice to then go through setting the whole thing up from scratch.
- mynameisvlad 3y ago
  Even with that, there’s more than enough tools out there to automate setup. For example, I use https://www.chezmoi.io/ https://www.chezmoi.io/ which creates a standard home directory set up (prompt etc), decrypts SSH keys and other private stuff, and installs a bunch of tooling through brew/apt.
- dangus 3y ago
  A “clean setup” is so overemphasized. It has no advantage other than wasting your own time.
  - twodave 3y ago
    Different people lose energy from different tasks. I.e. it may not tax your mind to have clutter around, but it can be a distraction for someone else. For some people (like me), clutter is fine but starting on a task takes a lot of energy. The important thing is knowing and accommodating for yourself to get the best results.
    - dangus 3y ago
      But you could just remove things from your existing install rather than starting all over. It really isn’t about clutter. The “clean install” thing is a habit from when old Windows would have phantom issues if you didn’t start over every so often.
  - Erratic6576 3y ago
    There are many tools I wish I had never installed. I’m now installing them on a VM first
bloopernova 3y ago
Unfortunately some macs may be within a corporate environment and thus are unable to use an external drive, so no Time Machine.
- piva00 3y ago
  My work MacBooks have the migration assistant disabled by MDM, it's a pain in the ass to swap, I can live with them for 3-4 years though so not a big problem, just annoying. For my personal Macs the migration assistant is fantastic, never had a hiccup and when I boot the new machine after migration is almost exactly like the old one, except for having to re-authorise some music software.
Brajeshwar 3y ago
These days, besides the dotfiles and few minimal settings that I remember, I just let it go as I go along. In about a month or so, it all gets to where I want.
- jwells89 3y ago
  This is what I tend towards too. It helps that my setup isn’t too deeply customized (for example I think the only UserDefaults change I make is to add a Quit menu item to the Finder’s app menu), so even defaults are reasonably usable.
pprotas 3y ago
You can also set most of these options in a shell script, here is my (shitty and outdated, but it proves the point) script https://github.com/pprotas/dotfiles/blob/main/osconfig.sh https://github.com/pprotas/dotfiles/blob/main/osconfig.sh Just run the shellscript when you get a new macos device
ed_balls 3y ago
If you upgrade from Intel to Apple Silicon skip apps sync. Too many issues.
- tiltowait 3y ago
  First I’ve heard anyone say this. FWIW, I experienced no issues, and I’ve been using migration assistant since my first (well, second, I suppose) Mac (I recently found an old config file dated 2007!).
  - ed_balls 3y ago
    I went from 2017 Intel to 2024 M3 Max I had problems with Homebrew and some apps installed through it (crashing). I couldn't compile one DLL. I had to reinstall Command line tools. Deleted one electron app - couldn't be bother. I also noticed two binaries (one was Python) running in x86 mode via Rosetta. It was slow. Another reinstall. You can check Kind in Activity Monitor (apple/intel)

dbuxton 3y ago

It's such a pain keeping track of all the `defaults write xxx` stuff when Apple updates. My current setup here in case useful to anyone: https://gist.github.com/dbuxton/3ccdfd88b05e1f2807c05fe32f5078b7 https://gist.github.com/dbuxton/3ccdfd88b05e1f2807c05fe32f50... (If anyone knows how to show bluetooth in top menu all the time on Sonoma I'd love to learn - haven't done much investigation but option seems to have disappeared in the UI...)

OJFord 3y ago
I was so glad to remove all that (and to a lesser extent, trying to maintain both Homebrew package names and pacman/AUR names for everything, which obviously sometimes differ or need a different thing anyway) when I started using a Linux machine for work (already did personally). That might change again unfortunately; I'm hoping some day Nix or something like it is a cross-platform solution, but I don't think it's there yet. Discovering the `defaults` options (or worse: what you're setting that no longer does anything) is a nightmare.
mckn1ght 3y ago
Can you still drag it from control center to the menu bar? I haven’t upgraded to Sonoma yet so I can’t test it.

KAdot 3y ago

> After discovering Chrome are eating my old Mac's battery, I turned to using Edge What? Have they tried using Safari instead of a Chromium based browser? From my experience Safari is by far the best browser on Mac in terms of the energy efficiency.

Guillaume86 3y ago
He does front end dev.
- OJFord 3y ago
  Aside from testing multiple browsers, that'd make me think you want Chrome or Firefox primarily, if any difference at all they probably have best/most tooling?
  - jwells89 3y ago
    All of the Chrome-clones (Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Arc, etc) have identical dev tooling and extension support because they’re all just Chrome with mostly-surface-level tweaks applied.
    - OJFord 3y ago
      I didn't realise Edge was such. Why would it make any significant difference to energy usage then?
    - hollerith 3y ago
      "Identical extension support" is untrue: Brave is a Chrome clone, and it intends to keep supporting manifest v2.
- timeon 3y ago
  If you test for Safari+Firefox it would probably work in chrome as well.
sgt 3y ago

behnamoh 3y ago

I think in 2024 there must be a better way to automatically get your new Mac to the state of your previous Mac.

dangus 3y ago
It’s been available for years/decades. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102613 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102613
alsetmusic 3y ago
Migration Assistant does this quite well. This is the built-in first-run cloning tool when you start a new Mac. I'm on maybe the fifth or sixth generation of cloned user environment in however many years. Apps, preferences, data, all copied from older machines to newer ones. I recently ran into a scenario where that didn't work (on an iPhone) when a device is managed by MDM. This is the first time I've seen it fail other than 15 years ago on an edge case. For a Mac, Homebrew has an option (or maybe another tool leverages it) to create a manifest of sorts to reinstall all the right tools. That's a bit different. I know that Casey Liss, of the Accidental Tech Podcast (https://www.caseyliss.com https://www.caseyliss.com, https://atp.fm https://atp.fm) has talked about it on his blog. I just woke up, so apologies for not finding it for you.
- ngcazz 3y ago
  `brew bundle`?
  - mckn1ght 3y ago
    more specifically, `brew bundle dump`
- behnamoh 3y ago
  But what about all the settings you changed in the OS preferences? What about app-specific configs? What about conda environments you've created? What about all the symlinks you made to make apps read configs from Google Drive, etc.?

xnyanta 3y ago

Pretty sure nix-darwin + its homebrew integration could set up 99% of this with a pull of your configuration repo and a single installation command.

mark38848 3y ago
After fiddling with it for months, potentially
- execat 3y ago
  You might be over-estimating how long it takes to write a Nix config. Just start with a reasonable Nix config and take it from there by comparing with nix-darwin and home-manager configuration pages. I know people who did it over a weekend.
notso411 3y ago
[dead]
Cyph0n 3y ago
Never used nix-darwin, but if it’s even a fraction as capable as NixOS, I believe it.
dlyons 3y ago
Shameless plug: I maintain a Nix for MacOS configuration starter that has a step by step guide on getting started (725+ stars). https://github.com/dustinlyons/nixos-config https://github.com/dustinlyons/nixos-config

amardeep 3y ago

Just a shout out to nix-darwin[1]. It is nix, so initial setup is a bit involved. But then it truly makes it easy to configure everything in one place including mac defaults, homebrew apps declaratively and mas apps etc. There is a sample config in nix-darwin repo[2]. [1] https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin [2] https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/blob/master/modules/examples/lnl.nix https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/blob/master/modules/examp...

okkdev 3y ago
I skip nix-darwin and use just home-manager. Does all I need. Don't really see the point of adding nix-darwin.
bsnnkv 3y ago
This is also my favorite way of setting up MacBooks. I love being able to set up all my Linux, macOS and Windows[1] machines from a single flake. [1]: https://lgug2z.com/articles/managing-dotfiles-on-windows-11-with-nixos/ https://lgug2z.com/articles/managing-dotfiles-on-windows-11-...
behnamoh 3y ago
Sounds too much hassle for something you want to come back to every few years, when the nix commands and procedure have changed anyway.

nickjj 3y ago

I only use a Mac for work through a company laptop but one thing I recently discovered is the world clock widget which is accessed through your clock. You can show up to 4 different times besides your local time. This is really handy to see the time in UTC and other timezones where some of your team mates might exist. This saves having to Google for timezone converters.

Bishonen88 3y ago
alternatively one can use an alfred plugin like this one: https://github.com/jaroslawhartman/TimeZones-Alfred https://github.com/jaroslawhartman/TimeZones-Alfred. That's what I'm using since a few years
atymic 3y ago
I find Clocker excellent for this, unified time scroller as well https://apps.apple.com/au/app/clocker/id1056643111?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/au/app/clocker/id1056643111?mt=12 (free)
nkristoffersen 3y ago
You can actually create multiple widgets of the same type. So as many timezones or cities you want to track you can just keep adding timezone widgets.
- nickjj 3y ago
  Good to know. In my case I happened to need exactly 4 so it worked out with the default set up. I like the easy access of it, just click your clock and boom in 1 second you have instant access to these. I even ordered mine based on relative closeness to my time. For example: My local time is EST. The extra 4 clock widget has UTC, Poland, India and Australia which are all +X hours ahead of EST in that order.
Terretta 3y ago
While we're sharing time zone tools, World Time Buddy is beautiful UX and richly functional: Site: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ Features: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/features https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/features Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.helloka.worldtimebuddy https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.helloka.wo... iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/time-buddy-easy-time-zones/id719765848 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/time-buddy-easy-time-zones/id7... And easy to add to your web site: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/clock-widget https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/clock-widget

dieulot 3y ago

> For GFW reasons, the Chinese users will fail to connect to github. Since when has GitHub been blocked in China? I thought the government reluctantly let it pass.

al_borland 3y ago

>Step 1: Enable tap to click We are very different people. Tap to click is the bane of my existence. I can’t work on a system that has that enabled.

behnamoh 3y ago
I think people who want more control disable it. It's annoying when it accidentally clicks on things.
- uldos 3y ago
  I just tried to enable it for 10 minutes and I will never enable it again. This is also a reason why I can not work on non mac laptop trackpads - they are unreliable, accident taps happens all the time.
  - jagged-chisel 3y ago
    I use tap-to-click, two-finger tap to right-click, three-finger drag for dragon drop operations. Never noticed an accidental click. I do, however, see canceled clicks often (I clicked, the item I touched changes color, but nothing happens.) Since I’m here, same thing happens on iPad and iPhone - touch, color change, no action.
daemonologist 3y ago
I enable tap to click on those "diving board" style touchpads if I'm going to be using the system for long stretches without a mouse - the amount of force needed and top-to-bottom variability of the diving board drives me nuts. I'd definitely rather have a modern haptic trackpad though.
- al_borland 3y ago
  I never found the diving boards bad, but I think that is due to starting to use trackpads back when they had physical buttons under them, and I never changed my technique. I use my index finger to move around, and my thumb hangs out near the bottom of the pad for when I need to click. I’m not sure how else I’d do things like a click and drag operation. The whole double tap and drag thing always seemed pretty error prone for me.

mstipetic 3y ago

I would pay a lot of money for a good tiling wm for a mac, not sure how it's not a thing. It's one of the main reasons I keep going back to linux, everything else I don't care about much

thfuran 3y ago
At least windows has fancy zones. Mac's window management is just sad.
kuchenbecker 3y ago
I use BetterSnapTool, which is $4. You can divide the screen however you want and hotkey to them.
- mckn1ght 3y ago
  Same with Moom.
  - mstipetic 3y ago
    those are not tiling wms
    - mckn1ght 3y ago
      Why not? You can essentially emulate the capability with Moom as long as you memorize the necessary shortcuts. I have a mnemonic representation of the location/size of window targets on my keyboard.
gomox 3y ago
I use Rectangle (free). Does the trick well enough.
stoniejohnson 3y ago
It exists! Check out [yabai](https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai), which is nicely paired with [skhd](https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd).

goodlinks 3y ago

Would be interested to see this for win 11. I recently got a new machine and was surprised how may little things i must have done to my last. Turning off file grouping, basically every option for the start menu. Actually now that i think about it its mostly just find every option that can be turned off and turn it off.

goodlinks 3y ago
To be honest, would be interested in seeing this for any OS
jwells89 3y ago
Don’t have a full guide, but winget is your friend for quickly setting up Windows and has come installed by default for a while now. Lets you install most popular software through the command line, which is much nicer than wandering around the internet downloading installers.
Unfrozen0688 3y ago
Note, all this may not be allowed if this is your managed work device. Here is some of my stuff I do. In general: Turn Windows updates ON!! DO NOT use any "debloater" scripts!! You can use a local account if you login with no@outlook.com and any password or something. https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/11/how-to-set-up-windows-11-without-a-microsoft-account/ https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/11/how-to-set-up-windows-11-w... In the Windows Settings just dick around a bit and play around with what you like. There is a Dev section, I turn on everything for EXCEPT RDP incoming connections. Win11 - This video shows how to restore a lot of stuff from Win10 they removed. And good stuff to disable in settings as you please. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL-RTGQ3iQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL-RTGQ3iQk "Godmode" folder shows you a lot of hidden settings https://www.howtogeek.com/402458/enable-god-mode-in-windows-10/ https://www.howtogeek.com/402458/enable-god-mode-in-windows-... Verbose login - Shows more detail on login and logoff https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/132125-enable-verbose-logon-messages-in-windows-10 https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/132125-enable-verbos... Remove Aero Shake https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-7/disable-aero-shake-in-windows-7/ https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-7/disable-aero-shake... Mmc.exe - old but good Sounds - Windows startup sound turn on Device manager - Turn off network card sleep Set DNS to Cloudflare for Families or ControlD for filtering O&O Shutup to turn off a lot of spyware shit https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 Applications: Microsoft Sysinternals Suite - Process Explorer is a way better task manager and psexec to run things as SYSTEM. Firefox + ublock origin. Can set as defualt browser now when Firefox asks. Notepad++ and Notepad2 ShareX - screenshots Eartrumpet - Volume management ModernFlyouts - Volume, Caps lock notification etc. Just way nicer than default. Twinkle Tary - Adjust monitor brithness with app TranclucentTB - Windows 10, adjust taskbar. Microsoft Powertoys - A tonne of extra programs and settings, program launcher, caffeine to prevent sleep etc. Mouse without borders - control several PCs with one keyboard and mouse. Works best over wiered network. Microsoft made. Free. Quicklook - Preview files with Spacebar like MacOS. CoreTemp - Temp and load monitor, also get hwmonitor and hwinfo 7zip - Zip,RAR etc Everything - Searches well, everything, way better on a Windows machine. Also go to Ninite.com and install stuff from there. No need for antivirus besides Defender unless you already have a paid one you like/company installed. A lot from here https://www.neowin.net/news/top-11-apps-every-windows-11-user-should-have/ https://www.neowin.net/news/top-11-apps-every-windows-11-use... Yes, the power of Windows!!

synergy20 3y ago

job mandates a macbook, had no choice besides changing the job, which I will do later. one thing bugs me the most, as a linux user, is that copy and paste by mouse middle button, now I have to use mouse to select it, then cmd+v to paste it, what a hassle. of course I changed that scroll down instead of scroll up thing, I don't want to move up the bar to move down the page, that's just odd. click to close windows does not really close the apps also bothers me. Apple is such a closed company nowadays, worse than Microsoft from the past in fact, made me hard to love it, thus those nitpicks becomes issues for me.

bitvoid 3y ago
> of course I changed that scroll down instead of scroll up thing, I don't want to move up the bar to move down the page, that's just odd. That's because the scrolling behavior with the mouse is annoyingly tied to the scrolling behavior of the trackpad, where the "natural scrolling" makes sense as a default because it's like you're moving the page up (similar to a phone) with two fingers rather than scrolling. I hate having to constantly change it in the settings as I'm switching between trackpad and mouse. The settings need to be separated. Just let me have natural scrolling with the trackpad and regular scrolling when I'm using a mouse without needing to open the damn settings app.
- beezoo 3y ago
  There’s a small app called Scroll Reverser which allows you to have a different setting for the trackpad and mouse. Not sure why we need a separate app for this, but it does work.
  - behnamoh 3y ago
    No need for an app. You can change the mouse scroll direction right in the settings.
    - jagged-chisel 3y ago
      And it doesn’t affect the trackpad? That’s the problem: switching it for one switches it for both.

uldos 3y ago

I don't think I can trust someone who suggests installing edge on mac...

dime 3y ago
He's a frontend dev, so part of the job. Not everyone has the luxury to write off/skip QA for Edge.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  Frontend developer. Never tested in Edge. I primarily develop and use Firefox. Rarely is a cross-browser compat issue reported, but if it does that we can test + fix on the go.
outside1234 3y ago
Why? What would you choose? It is actually a pretty good browser.
- vinni2 3y ago
  Firefox
prepend 3y ago
I use it on my Mac and like it ok. My main browsers are Safari and Brave. Then Chrome for google stuff only. Then Edge. Then Firefox. I was a primary Firefox for many years and finally gave up about 3-4 years ago when it just got too bloaty and buggy to bother. This might have been when I discovered Brave, but not sure. Anyway, Edge didn’t seem so weird to me at all.
CincinnatiMan 3y ago
Edge has native vertical tabs. Killer feature.

whatever1 3y ago

It is unbelievable how bad window management is at macos. Specially if you use multiple desktops it's impossible to not kill your workflow with the inconcistencies. You press a dock icon and you have no clue if it will open a new window in the current desktop or if it will switch to another desktop and show you an already open window.

Lawand 3y ago
[dead]
jwells89 3y ago
I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a program that opens a new window when other windows are already open on some other desktop/monitor. The behavior I always see is switching to the desktop with the window, with multiple dock icon clicks cycling through each desktop that program has windows on.
- whatever1 3y ago
  You have to remember if there is a window open in any of the desktops, because the dock does not even provide info on this. It just tells you that it has a program in memory, like it can help my workflow. Dock in macos is a useless process manager, not a taskbar.
  - asystole 3y ago
    I like macOS's window management in general but this is a good point. The dot indicators on the dock tell you whether an application is running, which on macOS doesn't necessarily mean it has any windows open. Clicking a dock icon results in a different action based on whether the application does have open windows, which is not visually indicated.
daemonologist 3y ago
My window management style changes completely when I switch operating systems - on Windows I use the taskbar (with actual named windows, not just the default icons), because the desktop switching and "overview"/view all windows feature are atrociously laggy. On Mac and Linux (Gnome), as you say, the dock is useless for finding your windows so I make extensive use of desktops and the overview, which both perform flawlessly.

y0ssar1an 3y ago

Raycast > Alfred Warp > iTerm https://www.raycast.com https://www.raycast.com https://www.warp.dev https://www.warp.dev

kilroy123 3y ago
I've wanted to try raycast but too lazy as I've already paid for Alfred. How does it compare? What about custom workflows? I have a bunch already created.
- jwells89 3y ago
  Alfred is ridiculously lightweight and well-optimized, too, which is something a lot of newer software struggles with.
asystole 3y ago
Raycast is great, I agree. Warp... last time I tried it (very recently) it wanted me to log in before I could use it. Log in. To a terminal emulator.
- imbnwa 3y ago
  >Warp... last time I tried it (very recently) it wanted me to log in before I could use it. Log in. To a terminal emulator Unforgivable
FireBeyond 3y ago
> Raycast > Alfred $10/month for some of the things Alfred offers, perhaps not.
SushiHippie 3y ago
For me alacritty >> other terminal emulators on macos. Not because it does have cool features, but because it is not as laggy [0] as the others and comes close to Terminal.app but supports 256colors [0] i'm normally a linux user and use "foot" as my terminal emulator, and the terminal emulators there are so much more responsive than on macos/windows

hakunin 3y ago

I used to have fancy long config files full of default writes, but every MacOS update changes so many things that it’s borderline stressful to run the file ever again. Things break in weird ways. The config ends up only being useful for the one time I setup this machine, and not the next. So my new approach: an Apple note where I just write down any settings I tweak manually in UI. If they ever relocate, I will find them in another place. I also write down any custom setup I do (like cron, etc). I also keep an iCloud dir of various software configs, and a Brewfile for all the software installs. I haven’t tried transitioning from this setup yet, but hopefully it’s much more straightforward, albeit a bit time consuming (it’s always time consuming).

nhggfu 3y ago

thanks for this OP.

zeroDivisible 3y ago

I've got a bunch of Ansible scripts, written in around 2013 or so - and then constantly tweaked over the years. Code quality isn't the greatest, but I've been using them to provision a bunch of laptops, Linux PCs, etc. They work good enough that I didn't search for a replacement yet. There's always a thing which needs fixing with these scripts, which is to be expected for something which is only fired every so often. Hardest part of using them is remembering to do any config changes in Ansible repos and not directly in config files. I have diverging logic, branching off usernames and group memberships to treat given machine as "personal" or "work" - and then configure certain settings differently. I'm using ansible-vault for secrets like SSH keys, etc. New machine provisioning is usually just installation of a package manager (if not present, like brew), and installation of Ansible.

samatman 3y ago

I always enjoy this sort of "here's how I set up my computer" post/repo. I just switched to WezTerm, but now I know that there's Warp. One of these weekends I'll have to take it for a spin. But setting up a new Mac? I follow the instructions on the welcome screen and plug in the old one. It works perfectly as far as I can tell, I'd have to count to figure out how many laptops I've migrated from one to the other but it's a solid decade of getting my exact setup running on a new machine with no tweaks necessary. I've never felt the urge to make a fresh start. I did have to purge Python libraries when I switched to the M-series processors, that was a pain in the butt to figure out. Other than that, smooth sailing.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

fragmede 3y ago

aldente.app for battery life contexts.app for sane alt-tab behavior