8 ms·

~/.osx updated — sensible hacker defaults for OS X Mountain Lion

169 points by mathias 14y ago

brennenHN 14y ago
That's a long list. I kind of want to run the whole thing just to see what happens...
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  There's plenty I wouldn't want. God forbid this alone: # Trackpad: map bottom right corner to right-click
- kcl 14y ago
  I wouldn't run the whole script blindly. You will have to do more than one linear pass through the script to find and invert settings you later discover you don't like. I recommend one close readthrough, uncommenting or commenting things you do or don't like, and then a full run. I do recommend running the script after a careful edit. It will save you time.
  - mathias 14y ago
    As the author of ~/.osx, I agree. Never blindly copy anyone else’s settings. Heck, never blindly copy _anything_.
- ylluminate 14y ago
  I have to recommend against a lot of the items of this script. Having carefully read through it, I can say that more than half of these are not reasonable changes for hacker defaults. My tweaks are more sysctl oriented vs these, although a few can be useful, but ymmv depending on how you are accustomed to working or if you want some of the new benefits, which I find quite useful, in X.8.
oacgnol 14y ago
As with any dotfile repo, I wouldn't recommend installing the entire thing at once. Instead, try and take the time to read through it and select settings that you want piecemeal. You'll end up knowing what everything does, especially in the case that something strange happens and you want to tweak things. Edit: I should note that I learned this the hard way starting out, I went backwards by ripping out things that didn't work for me/did not like, but not until after making some horrible mistakes!
- mathias 14y ago
  As the author of this dotfiles repository, I completely agree. These are my settings, and I’m sure not everyone will like this configuration. The idea is that automating all these OS X preferences (hidden or not) can save you a lot of time if you need to set up new accounts for yourself on a regular basis. TL;DR This repository is meant to be forked, not used as-is.
  - gdg92989 14y ago
    For example, dont use this AS-IS unless you want to make the scrollbar visible all the time.
glhaynes 14y ago
# Set language and text formats # Note: if you’re in the US, replace `EUR` with `USD`, `Centimeters` with # `Inches`, and `true` with `false`. :)
pooriaazimi 14y ago
This is the most important one, that's not been mentioned in OP: defaults write -g NSScrollAnimationEnabled -bool NO It disables the stupid "smooth scrolling". on Lion (and everything before that) you could disable it from the 'General' tab of SysPrefs, but now it's gone. What does it do? When you press spacebar in a web browser, or fn-downarrow in a text editor, it "smoothly" bring new content up from the bottom of the screen and pushes current screen up. I don't know, maybe it works great on recent machines, but my poor old 2009 MBP's graphics card is not really powerful, and this animation is not smooth at all. It distracts me a lot. I strongly suggest you at least try it. If you don't like it, just replace NO with YES and everything's back to normal.
- ewillbefull 14y ago
  Is there a way to change or disable the animation time when switching between spaces (or "desktops" as they are now called)?
  - pooriaazimi 14y ago
    To my knowledge, no. But the suggestions at http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/17929/how-can-i-disable-animation-when-switching-desktops-in-lion http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/17929/how-can-i-dis... help a little bit.
  - cjlm 14y ago
    The only way I know of is with "TotalSpaces", currently in a free beta. http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/ http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/
- lparry 14y ago
  I'm completely the opposite; having windows contents jarrigly jump down slows me down significantly as I keep having to scan to find my place. It's one thing that annoys me about vimium that there's no option to j/k scroll smoothly
  - pooriaazimi 14y ago
fredsted 14y ago
This isn't "sensible hacker defaults", it's more like "some guy's view of what Mac OS X should be like".
- CountSessine 14y ago
  Well, yes - it is a superset of all the little tweaks that experienced and demanding users have found useful at one time or another. Clearly, you shouldn't be applying the whole file all at once before deciding what it is in there that you need or prefer. Have a look at it - there really is some good stuff in there. This file, and then all the cool tweaks to the Cocoa text engine that you can make, make OS X a tough OS/environment to beat.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    fredsted's point is that it is not that. It's largely one person's personal preferences. I agree there's some good stuff in there, but there's also a lot I wouldn't like. I don't think it's a superset, just a set.
    - CountSessine 14y ago
      But how else would you describe a superset? I hate the glass dock and have hated it since 10.5 when it was introduced. You might like it and you'll stick with the default behaviour. For me it's a useful tweak. For you, you can live without it. It's not a superset of preferences - it's a superset of tweaks. Some of them you won't like, some of them are quite nice and this is a good place to find them all. Or did you mean that you know of a whole bunch of other tweaks that should be on the list? If so, add them and send a pull-request.
      - scott_s 14y ago
        There are many legal options one can change with the defaults command. Not all of them are present. Hence, it is not a superset of all configurations. Rather, it represents one person's preferences.
      - 14y ago
Watabou 14y ago
Is it really beneficial to disable disk image verification? What does OS X actually verify when it opens a disk image? It does take some time to verify disk images and I want to be sure of what I'm actually disabling.
- octopine 14y ago
  It's probably calculating a checksum of the file to check for corruption.
- msbarnett 14y ago
  It's taking a CRC32 of the contents of the image and comparing it to the expected value stored in the image. I've very occasionally run across corrupted disk images, which is what this catches.
  - binarycrusader 14y ago
    Considering I've frequently encountered this with botched downloads of disk images from the Apple servers, this seems like something that shouldn't be disabled. And no, it isn't my system, it's Apple's servers; only have the problem with downloads from them.
msbarnett 14y ago
defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool false This is a terrible idea. If your browser, or anything else, is ever conned into downloading and opening a file, the quarantine is the difference between "what the fuck, why is an executable I've never launched before trying to launch?" and silently getting owned.
- Watabou 14y ago
  I agree. It takes a second to read what you're opening and another second or less to click "Open". It should at least be commented out and if someone really needs it, they are doing it on their own accord.
- thought_alarm 14y ago
  I would love to not have to disable this, but it's buggy and I've had it up to here with pointless confirmations like "README.txt is an application downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open this file in TextEdit?"
  - msbarnett 14y ago
    That's not buggy, that's a text file with it's executable bit set, which is actually potentially dangerous.
    - klodolph 14y ago
      Well, perhaps it is a bug. An addition to the Info.plist in the editor could say, "always safe to open this kind of file".
    - philwelch 14y ago
      Not if you're opening it in a text editor.
      - msbarnett 14y ago
        There's no way for LaunchServices to know, a priori, whether a given executable file's default app is going to perform a safe editing operation, or execute its contents. Now, you could hardcode a list of "safe" apps, or add some kind of "I swear I'm safe" declaration to the app's plist, but that has its own set of problems. A one-time "this seems funky to me, are you actually intending to do this?" is a simple and safe default.
pixelcort 14y ago
See also http://secrets.blacktree.com http://secrets.blacktree.com , a database of known hidden settings that can be changed. There is also a Preference Pane available there that makes it really easy to adjust them form System Preferences.
jkbr 14y ago
This: # Finder: allow text selection in Quick Look defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection -bool true Combined with "Use OSX Finder Quicklook (Spacebar) to preview all plain text files"[1] is pretty useful. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4230594 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4230594
stevencorona 14y ago
I don't think I'd like this at all. What's the point of disabling animations, system-wide resume, not letting the OS terminate inactive apps, etc?
- radley 14y ago
  Animations take time and get old fast. Terminating inactive apps doesn't work right. Often you'll try to reopen an app (such as Preview) and it's stuck: finder thinks it's already open but it's not. So you have to force close it and reopen it. There's a lot of ideas in Lion & MLion that clearly should never have passed if there was a tasteful gatekeeper at the helm, but now everyone's a UX expert and it's a sloppy, half-baked mess of random, unchangeable preferences.
shelf 14y ago
Great list. Stripping animations out is always appreciated. Does anyone know how to alter / remove the animation from horizontal motion between spaces? Particularly when using the keyboard shortcuts, this whizzing is disorienting and irritating. I assume it is not possible, given that animation seems to be keenly bound to the trackpad 'peeking' operation and all.
- cjlm 14y ago
  As mentioned above, I was happy to find TotalSpaces (http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/ http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/) which allows you to disable it completely!
lovskogen 14y ago
It would be great to have a script that setup your machine with all settings, is there a list of all "defaults write" commands somewhere?
- kjbekkelund 14y ago
  Check out http://secrets.blacktree.com/ http://secrets.blacktree.com/
  - mathias 14y ago
    Sadly, most of those are outdated. :(
pkamb 14y ago
`# Group windows by application in Mission Control` `defaults write com.apple.dock "expose-group-by-app" -bool true` Can't believe any hackers would use this. Mountain Lion was worth $20 just for the new `false` alone.
mseebach 14y ago
Looks great. How about making home/end on external keyboards go to beginning/end of the line rather than the document?
- ericb 14y ago
  I highly recommend this app for things like that: http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/ http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/ It does that, and many more useful things too. I have command on mac, and from a different app, control on my ubuntu machines mapped to caps lock. So wherever I am, I can use the same key combo...
jayferd 14y ago
You know, when I tell people I use Linux, they usually say something like, "But don't you have to spend countless hours on pointless yak-shaving tasks just to get things to work sensibly?"
89a 14y ago
> Sensible HAHA! What? How on Earth are these sensible > # Disable the warning before emptying the Trash > # Empty Trash securely by default > # Disable the “Are you sure you want to open this application?” dialog

169 points by mathias 14y ago

brennenHN 14y ago

That's a long list. I kind of want to run the whole thing just to see what happens...

drivebyacct2 14y ago
There's plenty I wouldn't want. God forbid this alone: # Trackpad: map bottom right corner to right-click
kcl 14y ago
I wouldn't run the whole script blindly. You will have to do more than one linear pass through the script to find and invert settings you later discover you don't like. I recommend one close readthrough, uncommenting or commenting things you do or don't like, and then a full run. I do recommend running the script after a careful edit. It will save you time.
- mathias 14y ago
  As the author of ~/.osx, I agree. Never blindly copy anyone else’s settings. Heck, never blindly copy _anything_.
ylluminate 14y ago
I have to recommend against a lot of the items of this script. Having carefully read through it, I can say that more than half of these are not reasonable changes for hacker defaults. My tweaks are more sysctl oriented vs these, although a few can be useful, but ymmv depending on how you are accustomed to working or if you want some of the new benefits, which I find quite useful, in X.8.

oacgnol 14y ago

As with any dotfile repo, I wouldn't recommend installing the entire thing at once. Instead, try and take the time to read through it and select settings that you want piecemeal. You'll end up knowing what everything does, especially in the case that something strange happens and you want to tweak things. Edit: I should note that I learned this the hard way starting out, I went backwards by ripping out things that didn't work for me/did not like, but not until after making some horrible mistakes!

mathias 14y ago
As the author of this dotfiles repository, I completely agree. These are my settings, and I’m sure not everyone will like this configuration. The idea is that automating all these OS X preferences (hidden or not) can save you a lot of time if you need to set up new accounts for yourself on a regular basis. TL;DR This repository is meant to be forked, not used as-is.
- gdg92989 14y ago
  For example, dont use this AS-IS unless you want to make the scrollbar visible all the time.

glhaynes 14y ago

# Set language and text formats # Note: if you’re in the US, replace `EUR` with `USD`, `Centimeters` with # `Inches`, and `true` with `false`. :)

pooriaazimi 14y ago

This is the most important one, that's not been mentioned in OP: defaults write -g NSScrollAnimationEnabled -bool NO It disables the stupid "smooth scrolling". on Lion (and everything before that) you could disable it from the 'General' tab of SysPrefs, but now it's gone. What does it do? When you press spacebar in a web browser, or fn-downarrow in a text editor, it "smoothly" bring new content up from the bottom of the screen and pushes current screen up. I don't know, maybe it works great on recent machines, but my poor old 2009 MBP's graphics card is not really powerful, and this animation is not smooth at all. It distracts me a lot. I strongly suggest you at least try it. If you don't like it, just replace NO with YES and everything's back to normal.

ewillbefull 14y ago
Is there a way to change or disable the animation time when switching between spaces (or "desktops" as they are now called)?
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  To my knowledge, no. But the suggestions at http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/17929/how-can-i-disable-animation-when-switching-desktops-in-lion http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/17929/how-can-i-dis... help a little bit.
- cjlm 14y ago
  The only way I know of is with "TotalSpaces", currently in a free beta. http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/ http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/
lparry 14y ago
I'm completely the opposite; having windows contents jarrigly jump down slows me down significantly as I keep having to scan to find my place. It's one thing that annoys me about vimium that there's no option to j/k scroll smoothly
- pooriaazimi 14y ago

fredsted 14y ago

This isn't "sensible hacker defaults", it's more like "some guy's view of what Mac OS X should be like".

CountSessine 14y ago
Well, yes - it is a superset of all the little tweaks that experienced and demanding users have found useful at one time or another. Clearly, you shouldn't be applying the whole file all at once before deciding what it is in there that you need or prefer. Have a look at it - there really is some good stuff in there. This file, and then all the cool tweaks to the Cocoa text engine that you can make, make OS X a tough OS/environment to beat.
- scott_s 14y ago
  fredsted's point is that it is not that. It's largely one person's personal preferences. I agree there's some good stuff in there, but there's also a lot I wouldn't like. I don't think it's a superset, just a set.
  - CountSessine 14y ago
    But how else would you describe a superset? I hate the glass dock and have hated it since 10.5 when it was introduced. You might like it and you'll stick with the default behaviour. For me it's a useful tweak. For you, you can live without it. It's not a superset of preferences - it's a superset of tweaks. Some of them you won't like, some of them are quite nice and this is a good place to find them all. Or did you mean that you know of a whole bunch of other tweaks that should be on the list? If so, add them and send a pull-request.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      There are many legal options one can change with the defaults command. Not all of them are present. Hence, it is not a superset of all configurations. Rather, it represents one person's preferences.
    - 14y ago

Watabou 14y ago

Is it really beneficial to disable disk image verification? What does OS X actually verify when it opens a disk image? It does take some time to verify disk images and I want to be sure of what I'm actually disabling.

octopine 14y ago
It's probably calculating a checksum of the file to check for corruption.
msbarnett 14y ago
It's taking a CRC32 of the contents of the image and comparing it to the expected value stored in the image. I've very occasionally run across corrupted disk images, which is what this catches.
- binarycrusader 14y ago
  Considering I've frequently encountered this with botched downloads of disk images from the Apple servers, this seems like something that shouldn't be disabled. And no, it isn't my system, it's Apple's servers; only have the problem with downloads from them.

msbarnett 14y ago

defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool false This is a terrible idea. If your browser, or anything else, is ever conned into downloading and opening a file, the quarantine is the difference between "what the fuck, why is an executable I've never launched before trying to launch?" and silently getting owned.

Watabou 14y ago
I agree. It takes a second to read what you're opening and another second or less to click "Open". It should at least be commented out and if someone really needs it, they are doing it on their own accord.
thought_alarm 14y ago
I would love to not have to disable this, but it's buggy and I've had it up to here with pointless confirmations like "README.txt is an application downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open this file in TextEdit?"
- msbarnett 14y ago
  That's not buggy, that's a text file with it's executable bit set, which is actually potentially dangerous.
  - klodolph 14y ago
    Well, perhaps it is a bug. An addition to the Info.plist in the editor could say, "always safe to open this kind of file".
  - philwelch 14y ago
    Not if you're opening it in a text editor.
    - msbarnett 14y ago
      There's no way for LaunchServices to know, a priori, whether a given executable file's default app is going to perform a safe editing operation, or execute its contents. Now, you could hardcode a list of "safe" apps, or add some kind of "I swear I'm safe" declaration to the app's plist, but that has its own set of problems. A one-time "this seems funky to me, are you actually intending to do this?" is a simple and safe default.

pixelcort 14y ago

See also http://secrets.blacktree.com http://secrets.blacktree.com , a database of known hidden settings that can be changed. There is also a Preference Pane available there that makes it really easy to adjust them form System Preferences.

jkbr 14y ago

This: # Finder: allow text selection in Quick Look defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection -bool true Combined with "Use OSX Finder Quicklook (Spacebar) to preview all plain text files"[1] is pretty useful. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4230594 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4230594

stevencorona 14y ago

I don't think I'd like this at all. What's the point of disabling animations, system-wide resume, not letting the OS terminate inactive apps, etc?

radley 14y ago
Animations take time and get old fast. Terminating inactive apps doesn't work right. Often you'll try to reopen an app (such as Preview) and it's stuck: finder thinks it's already open but it's not. So you have to force close it and reopen it. There's a lot of ideas in Lion & MLion that clearly should never have passed if there was a tasteful gatekeeper at the helm, but now everyone's a UX expert and it's a sloppy, half-baked mess of random, unchangeable preferences.

shelf 14y ago

Great list. Stripping animations out is always appreciated. Does anyone know how to alter / remove the animation from horizontal motion between spaces? Particularly when using the keyboard shortcuts, this whizzing is disorienting and irritating. I assume it is not possible, given that animation seems to be keenly bound to the trackpad 'peeking' operation and all.

cjlm 14y ago
As mentioned above, I was happy to find TotalSpaces (http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/ http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/) which allows you to disable it completely!

lovskogen 14y ago

It would be great to have a script that setup your machine with all settings, is there a list of all "defaults write" commands somewhere?

kjbekkelund 14y ago
Check out http://secrets.blacktree.com/ http://secrets.blacktree.com/
- mathias 14y ago
  Sadly, most of those are outdated. :(

pkamb 14y ago

`# Group windows by application in Mission Control` `defaults write com.apple.dock "expose-group-by-app" -bool true` Can't believe any hackers would use this. Mountain Lion was worth $20 just for the new `false` alone.

mseebach 14y ago

Looks great. How about making home/end on external keyboards go to beginning/end of the line rather than the document?

ericb 14y ago
I highly recommend this app for things like that: http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/ http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/ It does that, and many more useful things too. I have command on mac, and from a different app, control on my ubuntu machines mapped to caps lock. So wherever I am, I can use the same key combo...

jayferd 14y ago

You know, when I tell people I use Linux, they usually say something like, "But don't you have to spend countless hours on pointless yak-shaving tasks just to get things to work sensibly?"

89a 14y ago

> Sensible HAHA! What? How on Earth are these sensible > # Disable the warning before emptying the Trash > # Empty Trash securely by default > # Disable the “Are you sure you want to open this application?” dialog