This is how I set up my Macs. This focussed on the common apps without which I feel lost, how I configure my Terminal.app using Fish shell, and the different tools for Apple and backend development.

Settings

  • Language: English
  • Trackpad: Tap to click (under Trackpad) and three-finger drag (under Accessibility > Pointer Control)
  • Computer name

Apps

My selection of apps is biased to multi-platform apps, so that I can use them from Linux as well.

Must haves to feel at home:

Then:

Command line

  • Install Homebrew
  • brew install fish and follow instructions

Connecting the above apps:

  • Install smerge to launch Sublime Merge: ln -s /Applications/Sublime\ Merge.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/smerge /usr/local/bin/
  • Install code to launch VSCode. Launch VSCode, hit ⇧⌘P, then select “Shell command: install ‘code’”

Fish Shell

Make sure, VSCode (or Zed) is installed, for easy modifying of any configuration.

Font

I like using Nerd Fonts, which add a bunch of glyphs that are useful for coding. Install as follows:

brew tap homebrew/cask-fonts
brew install font-hack-nerd-font --cask

Themes and plugins

  • Get OMF for installing Fish plug-ins and themes
  • omf install bobthefish as a nice themes (if it looks broken, remember to pick Fira as your font!)

Configuring Zed

To use the same font in Zed’s terminal, open Zed, hit ⌘, and add the following:

{
  ...,
  "terminal": {
    "font_family": "Fira Mono for Powerline"
  }
}

Apple development

Setting up Ruby:

  • brew install rbenv; rbenv init and follow instructions
  • rbenv install 3.0.0; rbenv global 3.0.0
  • First run bash to switch from fish to bash, and then run rbenv init so that ruby will be consistent across bash and fish.
  • gem install bundler

Other tools:

  • brew install swiftlint
  • brew install xcbeautify

Generating documentation:

  • gem install jazzy
  • brew install python3; pip3 install mkdocs; pip3 install pymdown-extensions

Backend development

Local LLMs: