In May I’ve set up three different Macs (don’t ask) starting from a clean macOS Monterey installation. Here’s what I install and in what order to feel at home:
- Things
- Spotify
- SteerMouse
- configure buttons
- configure sensitivity
- tweak macOS settings
- remove everything from the Dock
- download wallpaper from the pixel sorting post
- configure dock and menu bar
- disable autocorrection
- configure spaces
- configure hot corners
- configure Finder
- configure Safari:
- Fira Code
- MacVim
- iTerm
- generate a new SSH key
- dotfiles
- configure iTerm
- Karabiner
- Hammerspoon
- Visual Studio Code
- ⇧⌘P sync settings using GitHub
- VLC
- Xcode
- general
- text editing
- install One Dark theme
- increase the font size to 20
- change the background color to be the same as in MacVim and VS Code
- remove the “Print…” key binding
- remap “Open Quickly…” to ⌘P
- remove “Move Paragraph Backward/Forward”
- remap “Move Line Up/Down (Source Code)” to ⌥↑, ⌥↓
- remove “Duplicate”
- remap “Show Debug Area” to ⌘D
- enable Vim mode: help › search › “vim”
- disable minimap: help › search › “minimap”
This is not a complete list of everything I use or tweak, but it’s a solid starting point that gets me 80–90% of the way there.