My personal dotfiles

This repository serves as my way to help me set up and maintain my Mac. It takes the effort out of installing everything manually. Everything needed to install my preferred setup of macOS is detailed in this readme. Feel free to explore, learn and copy parts for your own dotfiles.

A Fresh macOS Setup

These instructions are for when you've already set up your dotfiles. If you want to get started on your own dotfiles, you can find instructions below.

Backup your data

If you're migrating from an existing Mac, you should first make sure to back up all of your existing data. Go through the checklist below to make sure you didn't forget anything before you migrate.

• Did you commit and push any changes/branches to your git repositories?
• Did you remember to save all important documents from non-iCloud directories?
• Did you save all of your work from apps which aren't synced through iCloud?
• Did you remember to export important data from your local database?

Setting up your Mac

After backing up your old Mac, you may now follow these installation instructions to set up a new one.

Note: these installation instructions are tailored to myself. Your requirements may vary, and you should be pulling down your own dotfiles repository.

1. Update macOS to the latest version through system preferences.
2. Set up an SSH key by installing 1Password. Use the 1Password SSH agent and sync your SSH keys locally. Make sure to set the default key used in the terminal to the SSH key set in the GitHub account.
3. Clone this repository to ~/.dotfiles with:

git clone --recursive https://git@github.com/rawilk/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles

4. Run the installation with:

cd ~/.dotfiles && ./fresh.sh

5. Start Herd.app and run its installation process.
6. Restart your computer to finalize the process.

Your Mac is now ready to use!

💡 You can use a different location than ~/.dotfiles if you want. Make sure you also update the reference in the .zshrc file.

Cleaning your old Mac (optional)

After you've set up your new Mac, you may want to wipe it and perform a clean installation on it. Follow this article to do that. Remember to back up any important data first, though!

Fresh macOS install

From time-to-time, it may be beneficial to completely re-install macOS on your machine and start over. I typically like to do this for each major release of macOS. After going through the checklist above, you can follow this article to cleanly install the latest macOS version.

Your Own Dotfiles

Please note that the instructions below assume you already have set up Oh My Zsh so make sure to first install Oh My Zsh before you continue.

If you want to install your own dotfiles from this setup, it's pretty straightforward to do so. First, you'll need to fork this repo. After that you can tweak it any way you want.

Go through the .macos file and adjust the settings to your liking. You can find many more settings at the original script by Mathias Bynens and Kevin Suttle's macOS Defaults project.

Check out the Brewfile file and adjust the apps you want to install for your machine. Use their search page to check if the app you want to install is available.

Check out the .aliases file and add your own aliases. If you need to tweak your $PATH check out the .zshrc file. More info about how to customize Oh My Zsh can be found here.

Credits

Inspiration for these dotfiles is taken from:

• Dries Vints Dot Files
• Freek Van der Herten Dot Files