Settling In to a New Mac

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Settling In to a New Mac
Settling In to a New Mac

This is a rather chaotic list of all of the things I do to a new OS X installation to make it home. It isn't entirely comprehensive; but it does highlight most of the important things. This list is catered for users who do web development and are pretty used to Linux environments.

Installation

Configuration

Turn the Caps Lock key into escape

  • PC Keyboard Hack – Caps Lock to 53
  • Keyboard Preferences – Modifier Keys – Caps Lock = No Action

Use Alfred as the default app launcher

  • Spotlight Preferences – Disable Keys
  • Alfred Preferences – Set to Cmd Space
  • Hide Alfred Hat
  • Disable Spotlight icon with:
sudo chmod 600 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search
killall SystemUIServer

Configure Finder

  • Hide “All My Files”
  • Show Filename Extensions
  • Disable Extension Change Warning
  • Preferences | General | Sidebar Icon Size = Small
  • Create ~/Applications
  • Create ~/bin, chflags hidden ~/bin
  • Display Full Path in Finder Title:
defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES
killall Finder

Command Line Awesomeness

  • Install the Command Line Tools within Xcode
  • Install homebrew
  • brew install tmux ack node mongodb sshfs
  • copy mvim which came with MacVim into ~/bin
  • Add ~/bin to $PATH variable
  • Configure VIM Settings from GitHub
  • Copy previous ~/.bash_profile settings
Thomas Hunter II Avatar

Thomas has contributed to dozens of enterprise Node.js services and has worked for a company dedicated to securing Node.js. He has spoken at several conferences on Node.js and JavaScript and is an O'Reilly published author.