My Mac setup for work 👩‍💻

Publish Date: Dec 6 '20

220 23

This weekend I'm going to set up a new Macbook Pro 13' for work. 💻 Here are my current preferences for setting up a MacBook Pro.

 > System Preferences :

Keyboard
- Input sources - English - set to ABC instead of a specific country.
- Key repeat set to the fastest and delayed until repeat to the shortest.
- Shortcuts - Mission Control - overwrite command + Q to the Do Not Disturb on/off
Desktop & Screen Saver
- Screen Saver - Hot Corner - Set lock screen or sleep
Trackpad
- Point & Click - change the speed to the fastest
Disable Ask Siri
Dock
- Remove everything unnecessary application but leave some important like Finder and Trash
- Show recent applications in Dock
- Turn automatically hiding on
Finder - show path bar
Accessibility
- Pointer Control - Trackpad Options - Enable dragging - three-finger drag
- Double click speed to the fastest
- Scrolling speed to the fastest
Security and Privacy
- Allow apps downloaded from App Store and identified developers
- Turn the Firewall on

Cherry-pick some good stuff here you think will suit you.

Applications :

IDE :

I'm using VSCode with JetBrains Mono and following extensions:

Prettier
GitLens
ESLint
Bracket Pair Colorizer
Code Spell Checker
Emmet
Live Share

Terminal environments :

I'm using iTerm2 + Zsh + Spaceship theme with following setup:

autosuggestions
syntax highlighting
homebrew
git
node.js
SSH

Thanks for reading my mac setup article. I really hope this could help speed up your process or gave you some ideas for the next macOS setup. 🚀

I am always looking for ways to improve my efficiency, so if you use any tool that you find useful, feel free to comment on this post.🙂

Comments 23 total

Dimitris KalomoirisDec 6, 2020
Great post. Thank you for all the above :)
Nice tips
- junDec 6, 2020
  Thank you! :D
Ben SinclairDec 6, 2020
What do you mean by "regular ABC"? I'm in the UK and Apple's keyboard layout is ISO but not really UK - it's somewhere between US and UK - so I have to go in and make a bunch of changes to get it as close to UK as possible.

I set cmd+Q to the thing that inverts screen colours, because it's the least destructive thing I could find and Apple don't let you turn the combo off.

Speaking of things you can't turn off, I set the dock to the smallest size allowed, auto-hide it and position it on the right edge of the monitor, so I'm less likely to trigger it by accident.

It's difficult to hack MacOS into a pleasant experience.
- junDec 7, 2020
  Thanks for the points, some are really great options :) The regular ABC means it's in English but I didn't set it to a specific country, the symbol above the key 3 on my keyboard is # but if I choose to British, it will type £ instead of #.
  
  I was using dock position on the right edge before and just decided to change to bottom this time due to my monitor is on the right display position, and so far I don't have any issue with auto-hide.
WillDec 6, 2020
I would recommend the starship theme for zsh, it is faster than spaceship as it is written in rust and imo it looks nicer.
- junDec 7, 2020
  Thanks! I'd give it a try since I use spaceship for a year now!
  - Mark PowellDec 11, 2020
    Alternatively, i'd look at Powerline10K (not 9K). Seems to be 28x faster than Spaceship
    - junDec 12, 2020
      Thanks Mark, I've heard good thing about it too!
Karthik RPDec 7, 2020
New Macbook Pro 13'? As in the one with M1 Processor?
- junDec 7, 2020
  I don't really want to be a beta-tester, I'd probably let one gen, then consider it :)
  - Karthik RPDec 7, 2020
    Oh ok, Was trying to get reviews for users.
    With the price tag that apple comes with, its understandable that no one wants to be the beta tester.
Francis Alturas ✨Dec 7, 2020
Nice setup! Sharing my team’s mac setup here as well. (We’re a bunch of coding product designers 😁)

macsetup.xyz/

I usually do a clean wipe every end of the year. So, I keep this handy 👌
- junDec 8, 2020
  Cool stuff! Thanks for sharing ✨
junDec 8, 2020
You're welcome
Nicholas DroneDec 9, 2020
I would look into Vivaldi as your browser over Brave. I too used Brave for a while, and have switched over to Vivaldi. They have added a few nice addons. Like screen capture supported right in the browser. The ability to keep notes as well, instead of copy and pasting to sticky notes.

Alfred is a must. It's free, but if you pay for it. It then supports the history of the copy command. Man, that saves me a few seconds every day.

Spectacle is another if you run multiple monitors most of the time.
- junDec 10, 2020
  Thank you for the suggestions and will check them out, especially the Vivaldi! 🤩
  
  I noticed that Spectacle is no longer maintained but there's another good option - Rectangle.
  - Nicholas DroneDec 10, 2020
    I'll have to look at rectangle then.
Lesley van der PolDec 10, 2020
Nice list! Does uBlock to much on top of Brave?
- junDec 10, 2020
  Thanks! Yes, they actually do similar things but uBlock could prevent the page from loading if there's any bad risk.
  - Lesley van der PolDec 10, 2020
    Ah cool! So just an extra neat little feature :)
Beatriz AzanhaDec 10, 2020
Nice list! I would also look into the clipboard manager called Flycut (apps.apple.com/br/app/flycut-clipb...) and Jolt for Caffeine to prevent display sleep! (apps.apple.com/br/app/jolt-of-caff...)
- junDec 12, 2020
  Thanks for recommending! I'd probably go for preventing the computer from sleeping on the System Preferences > Energy Saver.

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