My MacBook Setup (the 2024 version)
github.com>Step 1: Enable tap to click
We are very different people. Tap to click is the bane of my existence. I can’t work on a system that has that enabled.
It’s funny how I cannot live without this feature
I enable tap to click on those "diving board" style touchpads if I'm going to be using the system for long stretches without a mouse - the amount of force needed and top-to-bottom variability of the diving board drives me nuts. I'd definitely rather have a modern haptic trackpad though.
I never found the diving boards bad, but I think that is due to starting to use trackpads back when they had physical buttons under them, and I never changed my technique. I use my index finger to move around, and my thumb hangs out near the bottom of the pad for when I need to click.
I’m not sure how else I’d do things like a click and drag operation. The whole double tap and drag thing always seemed pretty error prone for me.
Three fingers to drag. I’ve been using a Windows laptop for a couple weeks and the necessity of double-click for drag lock is obnoxious.
I think people who want more control disable it. It's annoying when it accidentally clicks on things.
I just tried to enable it for 10 minutes and I will never enable it again. This is also a reason why I can not work on non mac laptop trackpads - they are unreliable, accident taps happens all the time.
I use tap-to-click, two-finger tap to right-click, three-finger drag for dragon drop operations. Never noticed an accidental click.
I do, however, see canceled clicks often (I clicked, the item I touched changes color, but nothing happens.) Since I’m here, same thing happens on iPad and iPhone - touch, color change, no action.
I stopped reading at this point, realising how different this person is from me and how much less likely I am to vibe with any of the other tips.
I don't think I can trust someone who suggests installing edge on mac...
He's a frontend dev, so part of the job. Not everyone has the luxury to write off/skip QA for Edge.
Frontend developer. Never tested in Edge.
I primarily develop and use Firefox. Rarely is a cross-browser compat issue reported, but if it does that we can test + fix on the go.
Edge has native vertical tabs. Killer feature.
Why? What would you choose? It is actually a pretty good browser.
Firefox
I use it on my Mac and like it ok.
My main browsers are Safari and Brave. Then Chrome for google stuff only. Then Edge. Then Firefox.
I was a primary Firefox for many years and finally gave up about 3-4 years ago when it just got too bloaty and buggy to bother. This might have been when I discovered Brave, but not sure.
Anyway, Edge didn’t seem so weird to me at all.
job mandates a macbook, had no choice besides changing the job, which I will do later.
one thing bugs me the most, as a linux user, is that copy and paste by mouse middle button, now I have to use mouse to select it, then cmd+v to paste it, what a hassle.
of course I changed that scroll down instead of scroll up thing, I don't want to move up the bar to move down the page, that's just odd.
click to close windows does not really close the apps also bothers me.
Apple is such a closed company nowadays, worse than Microsoft from the past in fact, made me hard to love it, thus those nitpicks becomes issues for me.
> Apple is such a closed company nowadays, worse than Microsoft
This may be true. But Windows is so absolutely horrible with ads and stupid bloat.
Even my work windows instance defaults to showing Kardashian/politics “news” on new tabs. My home windows instance has so much garbage installed.
Maybe Microsoft is more “open” but their design is poor and anti-user. I’ll settle for Apple being closed and user focused every day.
Of course, I’d really love a Linux laptop with the price and usability of Apple hardware, but I’ve been wanting that for 25 years.
I don't understand what the problem is with the windows!=applications paradigm, I GREATLY prefer it.
Some people just want things to work the way they're used to. I'm one of those people, I find it rather annoying to deal with the windowing paradigm used in (most) Linux windows managers and Windows itself. So I'm not surprised when I see it in the other direction.
I do wish it were possible to set up a macOS-flavored version of focus follows mouse, though. It would have to be adapted to the windowing paradigm, but I have some notes on how it could work. I don't expect Apple will ever add it and it would require deep hooks into many parts of the OS to offer it as an extension, so that's that. There's no perfect software, the only question is what you can live with out of the available options.
I wish there were a DE for Linux that replicated the Mac desktop paradigm. None currently do, even GNOME and Pantheon which people like to point to as the “Mac-like” DEs only aesthetically kinda resemble macOS… their windowing models are closer to a weird hybrid of Windows and iPadOS.
It’s an additional abstraction.
On Windows/Linux closing an app requires doing the obvious thing. Press the big X, you’re done. You’re back to the previous app instantly.
On Mac after closing a window what you see on the screen is a lie (besides the ever subtle menu bar and shades of gray); you’re still in the visually-hidden app.
But why would closing a window close the program? If my program has many windows open which big X should close the program? Why shouldn't I be able to run a program without any windows open?
> If my program has many windows open which big X should close the program?
The last one, obviously.
> Why shouldn't I be able to run a program without any windows open?
Because 99% of the time window IS a program. If a program has no windows, it is a process.
Why should a process and a program be different things? Sounds like an additional abstraction to me
There is absolutely 0 reasons why one would want to have a powerpoint/chrome/photoshop instance without a window.
Calendars, emails, chats that need to run headless in the background live naturally on the top menu bar.
And please spare us from "I want it to open fast". This should not be a user concern, the system should be smart enough to cache frequently used apps.
If I have many documents open in one of those programs and I'm pressing the key commands to close a window and open a new window often I don't want open a new window to suddenly stop working because I didn't realize I had closed the last window.
> the system should be smart enough to cache frequently used apps
I mean…isn’t it sort of doing that by allowing a windowless app instance?
> Apple is such a closed company nowadays, worse than Microsoft from the past in fact
I think that's debatable, the 90's were awful and nothing Apple does right now has the kind of platform dominance MS did. At the height of IE6's reign, there were whole areas of commerce and interaction that could only be done on a Windows machine.
But they're clearly moving in that direction. As we saw two days ago w/r/t the DMA evasion nonsense in Europe, Apple is now willing to pull the same kind of tricks MS was: like killing off browser-based apps (!) to force people onto its proprietary stack.
There's a thread down below about how Safari is better than Chrome. And it might be, but it's clear that from Cook's perspectives standard browsers are ejectable the second you can get people hooked on MacOS/iOS apps.
The window vs. app distinction is pretty easy to smooth over, just sub out ⌘Q for ⌘W so you’re quitting instead of closing windows.
The extra layer of grouping can actually be pretty nice at times, since it allows the user to for example close or minimize/restore all windows of an application across all monitors and virtual desktops at once, but it does take a bit of a different mental model.
⌘Q is evil, sitting as it does next to ⌘W. Too many disasters.
I disable it / remap it somewhere in System Settings.
Chrome nailed it
Is there plugins that can do same?
...until you need to close a Finder window and you need to remember to use ⌘W because that can't be quit. Then you need to make sure to ⌘-tab past Finder because it will hang around near the top of recent apps until you've switched to enough other apps to push it to the bottom of the list.
If anyone has a way around this I'd love to hear it, but I think it's basically a side effect of apps being allowed to be open without a window and Finder always needing to run, so seems like an inherent part of the MacOS experience.
In that case, there’s ⌥⌘W which will close all windows (works in other apps too). You can also use a defaults command to add Quit to the Finder’s menu (I do this to be able to easily temporarily hide desktop icons).
Thanks! I'll give those a go next time I'm on my work machine.
> of course I changed that scroll down instead of scroll up thing, I don't want to move up the bar to move down the page, that's just odd.
That's because the scrolling behavior with the mouse is annoyingly tied to the scrolling behavior of the trackpad, where the "natural scrolling" makes sense as a default because it's like you're moving the page up (similar to a phone) with two fingers rather than scrolling.
I hate having to constantly change it in the settings as I'm switching between trackpad and mouse. The settings need to be separated. Just let me have natural scrolling with the trackpad and regular scrolling when I'm using a mouse without needing to open the damn settings app.
There’s a small app called Scroll Reverser which allows you to have a different setting for the trackpad and mouse.
Not sure why we need a separate app for this, but it does work.
No need for an app. You can change the mouse scroll direction right in the settings.
And it doesn’t affect the trackpad? That’s the problem: switching it for one switches it for both.
The maximised window behaviour is the thing that bugs me the most as a primarily Linux user lumbered with a work-Mac. It's so weird to treat that as being on a different virtual desktop. Better than the Lion days when your second monitor could only show "brushed steel" if you had an app maximised, but not by much.
I use Moom, so maximizing a window without setting it to its own space is ctrl-cmd-z-space. Moom does a lot more than that, it's worth checking out, especially if you plug into external monitors as part of your workflow.
With that setup, I'm quite content with full screen putting the window in its own space. It's an affordance I use fairly frequently, in fact. Just not as often as maximizing the window within the space it already inhabits.
Being a work machine it's pretty locked down (compliance reasons); I don't have the option of installing much non-standard stuff.
I don't want to be unduly unfair - on the one hand, it's faintly annoying that Mac people always say "oh you just need to install ${widget}" ... but I realise that we do the same on Linux: "you just need to apt-get ${widget}" ! We have the illusion that that's part of the OS.
For the most part I think it's irrelevant whether some bit of software is provided by Apple or a third party, I see weird hissy-fits about, say, the fact that keyboard customization on macOS uses Karabiner, and I just don't get it. Yes, none of the three+ package managers used on macOS are built in, why would anyone care about that, what possible difference could that make.
But work restrictions are one of the circumstances where the difference becomes a practical one, and getting your company to relax the restrictions may be infeasible, or more effort than it's worth.
Double-clicking the titlebar should yield a more traditional maximize behavior, except in non-native apps which don’t replicate full native titlebar functionality. For those hovering over the green button with option pressed will show an option for traditional maximize.
As I recall - and my distaste for the work laptop is such that I'll defer checking until Monday - that leaves all the window decorations in place and generally wastes screen real-estate.
I get that this is the way of Mac - I just don't really get why anyone would like that.
Windows and the popular Linux DEs leave chrome of maximized windows in place as well. The only place you won’t find this is in niche window managers.
> click to close windows does not really close the apps also bothers me.
It closes App Store and System Settings. I wonder why they operate differently.
For single window apps it makes sense that closing the window also quits the app. For apps that can have multiple windows I suppose it would make sense for the app to quit when the last window is closed, but that seems less obvious that it should, somehow. One reason: The app might open with no windows, waiting for the user to open a file or something.
Sure. This sounds like an app that thinks pretty highly of itself - too valuable to let close.
I miss highlight/middle click to paste but everything else you listed is fairly arbitrary.
I only use a Mac for work through a company laptop but one thing I recently discovered is the world clock widget which is accessed through your clock.
You can show up to 4 different times besides your local time.
This is really handy to see the time in UTC and other timezones where some of your team mates might exist. This saves having to Google for timezone converters.
I find Clocker excellent for this, unified time scroller as well https://apps.apple.com/au/app/clocker/id1056643111?mt=12 (free)
You can actually create multiple widgets of the same type. So as many timezones or cities you want to track you can just keep adding timezone widgets.
Good to know. In my case I happened to need exactly 4 so it worked out with the default set up.
I like the easy access of it, just click your clock and boom in 1 second you have instant access to these.
I even ordered mine based on relative closeness to my time. For example:
My local time is EST.
The extra 4 clock widget has UTC, Poland, India and Australia which are all +X hours ahead of EST in that order.
alternatively one can use an alfred plugin like this one: https://github.com/jaroslawhartman/TimeZones-Alfred. That's what I'm using since a few years
While we're sharing time zone tools, World Time Buddy is beautiful UX and richly functional:
Site: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/
Features: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/features
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.helloka.wo...
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/time-buddy-easy-time-zones/id7...
And easy to add to your web site:
It is unbelievable how bad window management is at macos.
Specially if you use multiple desktops it's impossible to not kill your workflow with the inconcistencies. You press a dock icon and you have no clue if it will open a new window in the current desktop or if it will switch to another desktop and show you an already open window.
I use the Contexts [1] app, couldn't live without it (not affiliated...)
It shows me all open Windows and in which Desktop, in its Sidebar (I've disabled the macOS dock.)
Also the Cmd-Tab functionalities are nice, and i can use "Fn + [a single key] " shortcut to focus an app.
Would recommend.
HOLY COW!
Thank you so much internet stranger!
I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a program that opens a new window when other windows are already open on some other desktop/monitor. The behavior I always see is switching to the desktop with the window, with multiple dock icon clicks cycling through each desktop that program has windows on.
You have to remember if there is a window open in any of the desktops, because the dock does not even provide info on this.
It just tells you that it has a program in memory, like it can help my workflow.
Dock in macos is a useless process manager, not a taskbar.
I like macOS's window management in general but this is a good point. The dot indicators on the dock tell you whether an application is running, which on macOS doesn't necessarily mean it has any windows open. Clicking a dock icon results in a different action based on whether the application does have open windows, which is not visually indicated.
My window management style changes completely when I switch operating systems - on Windows I use the taskbar (with actual named windows, not just the default icons), because the desktop switching and "overview"/view all windows feature are atrociously laggy. On Mac and Linux (Gnome), as you say, the dock is useless for finding your windows so I make extensive use of desktops and the overview, which both perform flawlessly.
Virtual desktops on Windows still feel pretty hacked on, don’t they? Hopefully that’s a focus point for Windows 12.
I used to have fancy long config files full of default writes, but every MacOS update changes so many things that it’s borderline stressful to run the file ever again. Things break in weird ways. The config ends up only being useful for the one time I setup this machine, and not the next.
So my new approach: an Apple note where I just write down any settings I tweak manually in UI. If they ever relocate, I will find them in another place. I also write down any custom setup I do (like cron, etc).
I also keep an iCloud dir of various software configs, and a Brewfile for all the software installs. I haven’t tried transitioning from this setup yet, but hopefully it’s much more straightforward, albeit a bit time consuming (it’s always time consuming).
Just a shout out to nix-darwin[1]. It is nix, so initial setup is a bit involved. But then it truly makes it easy to configure everything in one place including mac defaults, homebrew apps declaratively and mas apps etc.
There is a sample config in nix-darwin repo[2].
[1] https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin
[2] https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/blob/master/modules/examp...
This is also my favorite way of setting up MacBooks. I love being able to set up all my Linux, macOS and Windows[1] machines from a single flake.
[1]: https://lgug2z.com/articles/managing-dotfiles-on-windows-11-...
Sounds too much hassle for something you want to come back to every few years, when the nix commands and procedure have changed anyway.
I skip nix-darwin and use just home-manager. Does all I need. Don't really see the point of adding nix-darwin.
It's such a pain keeping track of all the `defaults write xxx` stuff when Apple updates.
My current setup here in case useful to anyone: https://gist.github.com/dbuxton/3ccdfd88b05e1f2807c05fe32f50...
(If anyone knows how to show bluetooth in top menu all the time on Sonoma I'd love to learn - haven't done much investigation but option seems to have disappeared in the UI...)
I was so glad to remove all that (and to a lesser extent, trying to maintain both Homebrew package names and pacman/AUR names for everything, which obviously sometimes differ or need a different thing anyway) when I started using a Linux machine for work (already did personally). That might change again unfortunately; I'm hoping some day Nix or something like it is a cross-platform solution, but I don't think it's there yet. Discovering the `defaults` options (or worse: what you're setting that no longer does anything) is a nightmare.
Can you still drag it from control center to the menu bar? I haven’t upgraded to Sonoma yet so I can’t test it.
I've got a bunch of Ansible scripts, written in around 2013 or so - and then constantly tweaked over the years. Code quality isn't the greatest, but I've been using them to provision a bunch of laptops, Linux PCs, etc. They work good enough that I didn't search for a replacement yet. There's always a thing which needs fixing with these scripts, which is to be expected for something which is only fired every so often.
Hardest part of using them is remembering to do any config changes in Ansible repos and not directly in config files.
I have diverging logic, branching off usernames and group memberships to treat given machine as "personal" or "work" - and then configure certain settings differently. I'm using ansible-vault for secrets like SSH keys, etc.
New machine provisioning is usually just installation of a package manager (if not present, like brew), and installation of Ansible.
Would be interested to see this for win 11. I recently got a new machine and was surprised how may little things i must have done to my last. Turning off file grouping, basically every option for the start menu. Actually now that i think about it its mostly just find every option that can be turned off and turn it off.
Don’t have a full guide, but winget is your friend for quickly setting up Windows and has come installed by default for a while now. Lets you install most popular software through the command line, which is much nicer than wandering around the internet downloading installers.
To be honest, would be interested in seeing this for any OS
Note, all this may not be allowed if this is your managed work device. Here is some of my stuff I do.
In general: Turn Windows updates ON!! DO NOT use any "debloater" scripts!!
You can use a local account if you login with no@outlook.com and any password or something. https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/11/how-to-set-up-windows-11-w...
In the Windows Settings just dick around a bit and play around with what you like.
There is a Dev section, I turn on everything for EXCEPT RDP incoming connections.
Win11 - This video shows how to restore a lot of stuff from Win10 they removed. And good stuff to disable in settings as you please. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL-RTGQ3iQk
"Godmode" folder shows you a lot of hidden settings https://www.howtogeek.com/402458/enable-god-mode-in-windows-...
Verbose login - Shows more detail on login and logoff https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/132125-enable-verbos...
Remove Aero Shake https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-7/disable-aero-shake...
Mmc.exe - old but good
Sounds - Windows startup sound turn on
Device manager - Turn off network card sleep
Set DNS to Cloudflare for Families or ControlD for filtering
O&O Shutup to turn off a lot of spyware shit https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
Applications:
Microsoft Sysinternals Suite - Process Explorer is a way better task manager and psexec to run things as SYSTEM.
Firefox + ublock origin. Can set as defualt browser now when Firefox asks.
Notepad++ and Notepad2
ShareX - screenshots
Eartrumpet - Volume management
ModernFlyouts - Volume, Caps lock notification etc. Just way nicer than default.
Twinkle Tary - Adjust monitor brithness with app
TranclucentTB - Windows 10, adjust taskbar.
Microsoft Powertoys - A tonne of extra programs and settings, program launcher, caffeine to prevent sleep etc.
Mouse without borders - control several PCs with one keyboard and mouse. Works best over wiered network. Microsoft made. Free.
Quicklook - Preview files with Spacebar like MacOS.
CoreTemp - Temp and load monitor, also get hwmonitor and hwinfo
7zip - Zip,RAR etc
Everything - Searches well, everything, way better on a Windows machine.
Also go to Ninite.com and install stuff from there.
No need for antivirus besides Defender unless you already have a paid one you like/company installed.
A lot from here https://www.neowin.net/news/top-11-apps-every-windows-11-use...
Yes, the power of Windows!!
I think in 2024 there must be a better way to automatically get your new Mac to the state of your previous Mac.
Migration Assistant does this quite well. This is the built-in first-run cloning tool when you start a new Mac. I'm on maybe the fifth or sixth generation of cloned user environment in however many years. Apps, preferences, data, all copied from older machines to newer ones.
I recently ran into a scenario where that didn't work (on an iPhone) when a device is managed by MDM. This is the first time I've seen it fail other than 15 years ago on an edge case.
For a Mac, Homebrew has an option (or maybe another tool leverages it) to create a manifest of sorts to reinstall all the right tools. That's a bit different. I know that Casey Liss, of the Accidental Tech Podcast (https://www.caseyliss.com, https://atp.fm) has talked about it on his blog. I just woke up, so apologies for not finding it for you.
But what about all the settings you changed in the OS preferences? What about app-specific configs? What about conda environments you've created? What about all the symlinks you made to make apps read configs from Google Drive, etc.?
`brew bundle`?
more specifically, `brew bundle dump`
I have migrated with the Migration Assistant my MacOS (OSX prev) since 2008. That was the last time I installed a new mac and kept migrating everything to a new hardware without any issue so far.
This year I broke this and started from scratch just to retrain my brain to use new things.
It’s been available for years/decades.
I always enjoy this sort of "here's how I set up my computer" post/repo. I just switched to WezTerm, but now I know that there's Warp. One of these weekends I'll have to take it for a spin.
But setting up a new Mac? I follow the instructions on the welcome screen and plug in the old one. It works perfectly as far as I can tell, I'd have to count to figure out how many laptops I've migrated from one to the other but it's a solid decade of getting my exact setup running on a new machine with no tweaks necessary. I've never felt the urge to make a fresh start.
I did have to purge Python libraries when I switched to the M-series processors, that was a pain in the butt to figure out. Other than that, smooth sailing.
I would pay a lot of money for a good tiling wm for a mac, not sure how it's not a thing. It's one of the main reasons I keep going back to linux, everything else I don't care about much
It exists! Check out [yabai](https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai), which is nicely paired with [skhd](https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd).
It's not the same thing tho.
I agree but it's pretty close.
I really tried it but find it to be super inconsistent and more annoying than useufl. I tried several times, and nowhere near even basic wms on linux
Really only usable on a personal machine. Having to disable SIP is a non starter for work computers
Just curious, what features do you need that require you to disable SIP?
Even on my personal machine I haven't done that; I really just need to manage my windows and move them around.
instant switching virtual desktop is the one which I miss.
So this definitely isn't instant, but you can get pretty close (this is my setup without disabling SIP):
1. Go to Settings -> Accessibility -> Display, turn on Reduce Motion.
2. Use something like this in your skhd config:
ctrl - 1 : yabai -m query --spaces --space 1 | jq -r '.windows[0] // empty' | xargs yabai -m window --focus
Repeat this for however many virtual desktops you typically use.
I use BetterSnapTool, which is $4. You can divide the screen however you want and hotkey to them.
Same with Moom.
those are not tiling wms
Why not? You can essentially emulate the capability with Moom as long as you memorize the necessary shortcuts. I have a mnemonic representation of the location/size of window targets on my keyboard.
I use Rectangle (free). Does the trick well enough.
At least windows has fancy zones. Mac's window management is just sad.
> For GFW reasons, the Chinese users will fail to connect to github.
Since when has GitHub been blocked in China? I thought the government reluctantly let it pass.
Pretty sure nix-darwin + its homebrew integration could set up 99% of this with a pull of your configuration repo and a single installation command.
After fiddling with it for months, potentially
You might be over-estimating how long it takes to write a Nix config.
Just start with a reasonable Nix config and take it from there by comparing with nix-darwin and home-manager configuration pages.
I know people who did it over a weekend.
Shameless plug: I maintain a Nix for MacOS configuration starter that has a step by step guide on getting started (725+ stars).
Never used nix-darwin, but if it’s even a fraction as capable as NixOS, I believe it.
> After discovering Chrome are eating my old Mac's battery, I turned to using Edge
What? Have they tried using Safari instead of a Chromium based browser? From my experience Safari is by far the best browser on Mac in terms of the energy efficiency.
And also now arguably the best browser in terms of the standards, after hiring most of the w3c team.
I think that argument falls down in the face of the PWA mess in Europe. Standards-based application platforms, to Apple, are at best, a means to an end. And they'll throw them out the second they perceive them in competition with native apps. It's the same recipe followed by MS in the 90's.
macOS and iOS are different programs.
Run by the same management. I think an argument of the form "OK, they're trying to kill browser apps on iOS but clearly they love standards and would never do that on a Mac" is unpersuasive.
People have been making dire predictions that macOS will get locked down like iOS since the days when it was called iPhone OS. Not a single step down that slippery slope has ever occurred.
But hey, keep preaching doom, if it entertains you. Just don't expect other people to take you seriously, given the track record.
If on Monday of last week someone had predicted Apple would kill off web apps on iOS, you'd have surely given exactly the same response. And so on Saturday, now they they have, I find that unpersuasive. Make that of it what you will. One person's "preaching doom" is another's "reasoning from evidence".
Your inaccurate guesses as to what I might or might not say about something unrelated to what I did say is tedious.
I switched from FF to Safari to try it out a few weeks ago and the fact I can't click Command+D when I'm on a page I've bookmarked, to remove the bookmark, is killing me.
Other than that, it's been great.
He does front end dev.
Aside from testing multiple browsers, that'd make me think you want Chrome or Firefox primarily, if any difference at all they probably have best/most tooling?
All of the Chrome-clones (Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Arc, etc) have identical dev tooling and extension support because they’re all just Chrome with mostly-surface-level tweaks applied.
I didn't realise Edge was such. Why would it make any significant difference to energy usage then?
"Identical extension support" is untrue: Brave is a Chrome clone, and it intends to keep supporting manifest v2.
If you test for Safari+Firefox it would probably work in chrome as well.
> Setting up a new Macbook will be tough and cumbersome. Every time I get a new Macbook, I go over the same steps on how to set it up for my working experience.
Huh? My last several hardware upgrades I just plugged in my Time Machine drive and everything is migrated within 1-2 hours.
These days, besides the dotfiles and few minimal settings that I remember, I just let it go as I go along. In about a month or so, it all gets to where I want.
This is what I tend towards too. It helps that my setup isn’t too deeply customized (for example I think the only UserDefaults change I make is to add a Quit menu item to the Finder’s app menu), so even defaults are reasonably usable.
That's fine yeah but sometimes you want a truly clean setup. Basically using it as an excuse to get rid of stuff you don't need.
Even with that, there’s more than enough tools out there to automate setup.
For example, I use https://www.chezmoi.io/ which creates a standard home directory set up (prompt etc), decrypts SSH keys and other private stuff, and installs a bunch of tooling through brew/apt.
That makes sense but that makes it a personal choice to then go through setting the whole thing up from scratch.
A “clean setup” is so overemphasized. It has no advantage other than wasting your own time.
Different people lose energy from different tasks. I.e. it may not tax your mind to have clutter around, but it can be a distraction for someone else. For some people (like me), clutter is fine but starting on a task takes a lot of energy. The important thing is knowing and accommodating for yourself to get the best results.
But you could just remove things from your existing install rather than starting all over. It really isn’t about clutter.
The “clean install” thing is a habit from when old Windows would have phantom issues if you didn’t start over every so often.
There are many tools I wish I had never installed. I’m now installing them on a VM first
You can also set most of these options in a shell script, here is my (shitty and outdated, but it proves the point) script https://github.com/pprotas/dotfiles/blob/main/osconfig.sh
Just run the shellscript when you get a new macos device
Unfortunately some macs may be within a corporate environment and thus are unable to use an external drive, so no Time Machine.
My work MacBooks have the migration assistant disabled by MDM, it's a pain in the ass to swap, I can live with them for 3-4 years though so not a big problem, just annoying.
For my personal Macs the migration assistant is fantastic, never had a hiccup and when I boot the new machine after migration is almost exactly like the old one, except for having to re-authorise some music software.
If you upgrade from Intel to Apple Silicon skip apps sync. Too many issues.
First I’ve heard anyone say this. FWIW, I experienced no issues, and I’ve been using migration assistant since my first (well, second, I suppose) Mac (I recently found an old config file dated 2007!).
I went from 2017 Intel to 2024 M3 Max
I had problems with Homebrew and some apps installed through it (crashing). I couldn't compile one DLL. I had to reinstall Command line tools. Deleted one electron app - couldn't be bother.
I also noticed two binaries (one was Python) running in x86 mode via Rosetta. It was slow. Another reinstall. You can check Kind in Activity Monitor (apple/intel)
aldente.app for battery life
contexts.app for sane alt-tab behavior
thanks for this OP.
Raycast is great, I agree.
Warp... last time I tried it (very recently) it wanted me to log in before I could use it. Log in. To a terminal emulator.
>Warp... last time I tried it (very recently) it wanted me to log in before I could use it. Log in. To a terminal emulator
Unforgivable
For me alacritty >> other terminal emulators on macos.
Not because it does have cool features, but because it is not as laggy [0] as the others and comes close to Terminal.app but supports 256colors
[0] i'm normally a linux user and use "foot" as my terminal emulator, and the terminal emulators there are so much more responsive than on macos/windows
Was a Wezterm diehard, Lua scripting so good, but I'll be damned if Alacritty has the lowest latency when using Neovim
I've wanted to try raycast but too lazy as I've already paid for Alfred. How does it compare? What about custom workflows? I have a bunch already created.
Alfred is ridiculously lightweight and well-optimized, too, which is something a lot of newer software struggles with.
> Raycast > Alfred
$10/month for some of the things Alfred offers, perhaps not.