MinMac

This repository aims to cover the basics configuration of a new Mac. It can be used as a reference for installing and setting up environments/languages/libraries.

The overall theme is minimal as a clean computer offers clean thoughts.

Contributing

Feel free to contribute to this project using our (contribution template!!!!!!!!)[].

Table of Contents

• System Preferenes
• Xcode
• Homebrew
• Visual Studio Code

System Preferences

Optional but highly suggested changes:

General

• Show scroll bars
  • When scrolling
• Prefer tabs
  • always when opening documents

Dock & Menu Bar

Minimal

• Size
  • 15%
• Magnification
  • On & 25%
• Minimise windows using
  • Genie effect
• Menu bar
  • Show only the Control Centre (& battery status), as all the settings are already there and they wouldn't clutter the menu bar.
  • (image)[]

Notifications & Focus

• Notifications
  • All off

Users & Groups

• Login Items
  • Make sure to remove everything from here

Security & Privacy

Highly important

• General
  • Require password immediately after sleep or screen saver begins
  • Disable automatic login
  • Allow apps downloaded from:
    • App Store and identified developers
• Firewall
  • On
  • Firewall options
    • Untick Automatically allow built-in software to receive incoming connections
    • Untick Automatically allow downloaded signed software to receive incoming connections
    • Tick Enable stealth mode
• Privacy
  • Make sure to remove all apps that wouldn't need your private info. (i.e Linear needing your location).

Keyboard

• Keyboard
  • Key Repeat
    • Fast (Vim)
  • Delay Until Repeat
    • Short (Vim)
  • Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standars function keys
• Text
  • Add shorcuts such as '@@' -> 'tim@apple.com'

Trackpad

• Point & Click
  • Enable Tap to click
  • Enable Secondary Click

Xcode

Xcode is an integrated development environment for macOS containing a suite of software development tools developed by Apple for developing software for macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

You can download it from the App Store or from Apple's website.

Most of the development tools rely on the Xcode command-line tools:

# use this to install them
xcode-select --install

Homebrew

Homebrew calls itself "The missing package manager for macOS" and is oftentimes used to install different apps as you do on Linux (i.e apt install .../ pacman -S ... )

Installation

Make sure to have Xcode command line tools installed first.

sudo xcode-select --install

Then use the following script to install Homebrew

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

Path

To make the Homebrew-installed packages available to your shell, you need to add your Homebrew location to your $PATH.

Use this command to add it to your bash profile (zsh, fish, or other shell guides are available on google)

echo 'PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

Then to make sure it works, run

brew doctor

That's it!

Install apps using

brew install <formula>

Update formulaes with

brew update

Note: If that command fails you can manually download the directory of formulas like this:

cd /usr/local/Homebrew/
git fetch origin
git reset --hard origin/master

To see a list of outdated apps use:

brew outdated

Homebrew keeps older versions of formulas installed on your system, in case you want to roll back to an older version. That is rarely necessary, so you can do some cleanup to get rid of those old versions:

brew cleanup

If you want to see what formulae Homebrew would delete without actually deleting them, you can run:

brew cleanup --dry-run

To see what you have installed (with their version numbers):

brew list --versions

To search for formulas you run:

brew search <formula>

To get more information about a formula you run:

brew info <formula>

To uninstall a formula you can run:

brew uninstall <formula>

Casks

Homebrew-Cask extends Homebrew and allows you to install large binary files via a command-line tool. You can for example install applications like Google Chrome, Dropbox, VLC, and Spectacle. No more downloading .dmg files and dragging them to your Applications folder!

Search

Search to see if your desired app is available as a Cask using:

brew search <package>

Here is an example:

brew install --cask docker

Acknowledgments: Huge thanks to the mac-setup project which provided a lot of information in this guide.

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a lightweight but powerful text editor, capable of handling many programming languages like a full-fledged IDE.

Installation

Install using brew:

brew install --cask visual-studio-code

Launching from the command line

It's super useful to navigate to a folder and just write

code .

to open a new workspace on that folder.

This is done by adding code to $PATH.

1. Launch VS Code
2. Open the Command Pallete(Cmd+Shift+P) and type **shell** command to find Install 'code' command in PATH

Keybindings

This is an essential step in becoming a better and faster coder. Here are the most useful ones:

• Ctrl+P / Command + P : Displays the search bar to search for files ctrl+p.mp4
• Ctrl + B / Command + B : Toggle the sidebar
• Ctrl + F / Command + F : Find words in code
• Ctrl + J / Command + J : Shows terminal
• Ctrl + Shift + M / Command + Shift + M : Quickly shows errors and warnings
• Ctrl + Shift + L / Command + Shift + L : Multi cursor selection
• Ctrl + D / Command + D : One by one selection
• Ctrl + / or Command + / : Comments current line
• Ctrl + Shift + I / Shift + Option + F : Formats the entire file
• Alt + Up or Down / Option + Up or Down : Move line Up or Down
• Ctrl + Space / Control + Space: Show Code Suggestions
• Ctrl + G / Command + G : Go to a specific line
• Ctrl + L / Command + L : Select current line For more keybindings check the official documentation, those 👆, were the most useful ones.

Extensions

• This is where Visual Studio Code wins above all other editors, due to the number and usefulness of the extensions
  • Here are some of the most useful:
  • Import Cost by Wix | For web developers - this shows the size of each imported package
    • Import Cost - Visual Studio Marketplace
  • Material Icon Theme by Philipp Kief | Implements a lot of useful icons for your files.
    • Material Icon Theme - Visual Studio Marketplace
  • Prettier | Prettier is an opinionated code formatter. It re-styles your code in a beautiful way.
    • Prettier - Code formatter - Visual Studio Marketplace
  • Indent Rainbow by oderwat | Helps you see the indentation level of your code. Super useful in long HTML divs.
    • indent-rainbow - Visual Studio Marketplace
  • Live Server by Ritwick Dey | Launches a local development server with a live reload feature for static & dynamic pages.
    • Live Server - Visual Studio Marketplace
  • Eslint by Microsoft | Integrates ESLint into VS Code | Eslint - Visual Studio Marketplace
  • GitLens by GitKraken | Supercharge Git within VS Code
    • Visual Studio Marketplace
  • Python by Microsoft | Intelisense, Linting and more
    • Visual Studio Marketplace
  • Vim by vscodevim | Vim emulation for VS Code
    • Visual Studio Marketplace