Table of Contents

Background

Reading these types of posts are always fun for me. Call me a nerd or whatever but there’s something about seeing the apps and workflows that others’ are using. So with that said, here’s mine!

System Settings

Listed below are only the changes that I make from the defaults

General

  • Change hostname

Appearance

  • Allow wallpaper tinting in windows - Toggle Off

Control Center

  • Keyboard Brightness - Show in Control Center

Desktop & Dock

Dock

  • Minimize windows using - Scale Effect

  • Double-click a window’s title bar to - Minimize

  • Show suggested and recent apps in Dock - Toggle Off

Desktop & Stage Manager

  • Click wallpaper to reveal desktop - Only in Stage Manager

Widgets

  • Show Widgets - Uncheck ‘On Desktop’

Default web browser

  • Safari

Windows

  • Close windows when quitting an application - Toggle Off

  • Drag windows to screen edges to title - Toggle Off

  • Drag windows to menu bar to fill screen - Toggle Off

  • Hold option key while dragging windows to tile - Toggle Off

  • Tiled windows have margins - Toggle Off

Mission Control

  • Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use - Toggle Off

  • Group windows by application - Toggle On

Displays

  • Automatically adjust brightness - Toggle Off

  • True Tone - Toggle Off

Sound

Sound Effects

  • Play sound on startup - Toggle Off

Focus

  • Share across devices - Toggle Off

Keyboard

Text Input - Input Sources

  • Correct spelling automatically - Toggle Off

  • Capitalize words automatically - Toggle Off

  • Show inline predictive text - Toggle Off

  • Add period with double-space - Toggle Off

Mouse

Point & Click

  • Tracking speed - Fast

  • Secondary click - Click Right Side

More Gestures

  • Swipe between pages - Scroll Left or Right with One Finger

Trackpad

Point & Click

  • Tracking speed - Fast

More Gestures

  • App Exposé - Swipe Down with Three Fingers

Finder

Settings

General

  • Show these items on the desktop:
  • Favorites - Check Home Folder

Advanced

  • Show all filename extensions - Check

  • When performing a search - Search the Current Folder

Safari

Settings

General

  • Safari opens with - All windows from last session

  • Homepage: https://www.google.com/

  • Open “safe” files after downloading - Uncheck

AutoFill

  • User names and passwords - Uncheck

Advanced

  • Smart Search field: Show full website address - Check

  • Show features for web developers - Check

Homebrew

Homebrew is a package manager for macOS that allows users to install, update, and manage software packages

brew casks (GUI apps)

iTerm2 - my terminal.app replacement of choice (mainly due to split panes) - brew install --cask iterm2

Apache Netbeans - used for Java development - brew install --cask netbeans

Also need to install Java SDK - https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/#jdk23-mac

calibre - how I convert and manage metadata for various text files - brew install --cask calibre - example for converting .epub to .pdf in CLI: ebook-convert input_file output_file

1password - my password manager of choice - brew install --cask 1password

Obsidian - my notes app of choice - brew install --cask obsidian

Adobe Creative Cloud - I mainly am using Lightroom Classic - brew install --cask adobe-creative-cloud

Google Chrome - I only use this browser for college related tasks since my .edu email is provisioned via Gmail and is a managed profile - brew install --cask google-chrome

keepingyouawake - I used to use the caffeinate command in Terminal to prevent my Mac from sleeping. I’ve since switched to keepingyouawake since it has a visual indicator in my Menu Bar for when it’s active or not - brew install --cask keepingyouawake

maccy - my clipboard manager of choice - brew install --cask maccy

Mendeley - reference manager when writing college essays - brew install --cask mendeley-reference-manager

Notion- mainly for ASU notes - brew install --cask notion

PDF Expert - my PDF viewer / editor of choice - brew install --cask pdf-expert

Visual Studio Code - my code editor of choice - brew install --cask visual-studio-code

iStat Menus - use to monitor system hardware - brew install --cask istat-menus

Tailscale - How I remote into my servers from anywhere (VPN) - brew install --cask tailscale

Parallels Desktop - for running virtual machines - brew install --cask parallels

Firefox - I only use this browser for web development. I’d rather have a completely separate browser since it helps my brain “compartmentalize” tasks - brew install --cask firefox

mp3tag - this application allows me to edit the metadata of audio files - brew install --cask mp3tag - example: magick liberty-podcast-art.svg -resize 800x800 liberty-podcast-art.jpg

brew formulae (command line tools)

tree - handy command line tool that lists the content of directories in a tree-like (basically indented) format - brew install tree

ffmpeg - extremely useful command line tool that I use to convert audio and video (alongside a countless amount of other things) - brew install ffmpeg - example: ffmpeg -i input.mp4 output.avi

imagemagick - allows me to easily convert between different image formats - brew install imagemagick

Apps that cannot be installed via command line

SilverFast SE- scanning software for Epson V600

mas

Mac App Store command-line interface brew install mas

AdGuard for Safari (my ad blocker of choice) - mas install 1440147259

Day One my journaling app of choice - mas install 1055511498

Magnet (my window manager of choice) - mas install 441258766

GoodLinks - my Read Later app of choice - mas install 1474335294

Book Tracker - to keep track of TBR list - mas install 1496543317

Screens 5 - control MacBook Pro from iPad - mas install 1663047912

Things 3 - my task manager of choice - mas install 904280696

MindNode - mind mapping software - mas install 6446116532

Reeder (Classic) - my RSS reader of choice - mas install 1529448980

Windows App my screen sharing app of choice for remote access to my Windows machine (formerly Microsoft Remote Desktop) - mas install 1295203466

Sofa - How I keep track of various movies, shows, books, and music that I want to check out - mas install 1276554886

Xcode - IDE for iOS and macOS app development - mas install 497799835

iTerm

Oh My ZSH - open source framework for managing Zsh configuration -

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

iTerm2 Plugins

zsh-autosuggestions - suggests commands as you type based on history and completions

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions

zsh-syntax-highlighting - enables highlighting of commands whilst they are typed at a zsh prompt into an interactive terminal

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git $ZSH_CUSTOM/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting

ZSH Configuration File (.zshrc)

plugins=(
  git
  zsh-autosuggestions
  zsh-syntax-highlighting
)

Settings

Appearance

General
  • Theme: Minimal
Windows
  • Show window number in title bar: Unchecked

Profiles

Colors
Text
Window

  • Columns: 110

  • Rows: 40

Keys
  • Key Mappings -> Presets -> Natural Text Editing

Visual Studio Code

Appearance

  • View -> Appearance -> Minimap: Toggle off

  • View -> Appearance -> Sticky Scroll: Toggle off

  • Settings - Word Wrap: On

Extensions

Live Server - be able to launch a local development server with a live reload feature - Live Server -> Settings -> Custom Browser: Firefox

Python - support for the Python programming language; includes Python Debugger, formatting, linting, code navigation, refactoring, variable explorer, test explorer, etc

Atom One Dark Theme - theme of choice

vscode-icons - icon theme of choice

Terminal Commands

# take screenshots as jpg (usually smaller size) and not png
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg

# do not open previous previewed files (e.g. PDFs) when opening a new one
defaults write com.apple.Preview ApplePersistenceIgnoreState YES

# show Library folder
chflags nohidden ~/Library

# show hidden files
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

# show path bar
defaults write com.apple.finder ShowPathbar -bool true

# show status bar
defaults write com.apple.finder ShowStatusBar -bool true

killall Finder;

# disable creation of .DS_Store files
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool TRUE

SSH Keys

First, create a new SSH key in the ~/.ssh folder:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "github"

Create the SSH configuration file if it doesn’t exist yet:

# in case the file is not there yet
touch ~/.ssh/config

In your ~/.ssh/config file, add the new SSH key, so that it can get picked up for every terminal session automatically:

Host github.com
  AddKeysToAgent yes
  UseKeychain yes
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github

Add SSH key to MacOS’ keychain:

ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/github

Copy public key to system clipboard:

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | pbcopy

Adding SSH Key on GitHub

  • Settings

  • SSH and GPG keys

  • New SSH keys

  • Paste clipboard contents

Testing SSH key

ssh -T git@github.com