Being old-fashioned, I always want simplicity and speed. That’s why I use the terminal and NeoVIM. Here’s my setup on Mac. The key is I want to keep this deadly simple, thus when there’s an OK default, I would use that instead of heavily customizing. The biggest change over the years is the inclusion of AI-based tools, like ChatGPT or access to LLM API.

How to Set Up a New Mac

  1. Mac desktop basics:
    1. Dock to the left, hide
    2. Allow whole-screen zoom in Accessibility (for eyesight)
    3. Customize modifier key, CAPS LOCK -> ESC (for vim)
    4. Adjust trackpad scroll speed
    5. Install Alfred, point settings sync to ~/settings.
      1. Unbind Cmd+Space from Spotlight to Alfred.
    6. Set screenshot to iCloud location ```
      1. defaults write com.apple.screencapture location “$HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/screenshots”
      2. killall SystemUIServer ```
  2. Set up the terminal
    1. Install iTerm2.
      1. Set it to load from a custom folder in: Preferences> General > Settings. We will recover settings later in yadm. It’s OK for now.
    2. Or install Gostty, which is much clearer/faster than iTerm2, with less features as it’s pretty new.
    3. Install Oh My Zsh, with command: sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
      1. Additional zsh plugins: git clone https://github.com/Aloxaf/fzf-tab ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/fzf-tab, git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions and git clone https://github.com/zdharma-continuum/fast-syntax-highlighting.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/fast-syntax-highlighting
    4. Get a new font, I use DejaVuSansM Nerd Font, direct link. If you are using Ghostty, built-in font is already good enough, so no need to install this.
  3. Set up SSH and access to Github
    1. Assuming you don’t have the keys: ls ~/.ssh/id\_\*, use ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your-email@example.com" to generate, and set up a passphrase to protect it.
    2. Create ssh config file ~/.ssh/config with the following content. This instructs ssh-add to use keychain. 
       Host \*
 UseKeychain yes
 AddKeysToAgent yes
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id\_ed25519
    3. Add to key to keychain so you don’t need to keep input that passphrase: ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/id\_ed25519
    4. Copy your public key to Github pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub. Add a new SSH key there.
    5. Test setup with ssh -T git@github.com
  4. Install yadm to recover settings
    1. Install Homebrew, which downloads Xcode Command Line Tools. Command: /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
    2. Recover install brews, e.g. brew bundle --file=~/settings/brewfile
      1. Or install yadm brew install yadm directly.
    3. Get your configuration: yadm clone git@github.com:username/dotfiles.git
    4. Use yadm status and check out what the differences are. It’s great to always have a sane default.
    5. TODO
  5. Set up the terminal-based development environment.
    1. Get neovim: brew install neovim
    2. Get Node.js brew install node
    3. Get Amazon Q brew install amazon-q
    4. Get Claude Code npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code
    5. Get OpenAI Codex npm install -g @openai/codex
  6. Install other Mac Apps
    1. ChatGPT, Chrome, Edge, VimR, WhatsApp, Grammerly, Zettlr
    2. Chrome plugins: Grammarly, Save Pinned Tabs, Switch between recent tabs (MRU tabs switch), Video DownloadHelper.
    3. Safari plugins: Grammarly, TabBack.
    4. Some small utilities: Horo (timer), Quick View Calendar for dates, Magnet for window control.
  7. Other settings
    1. Some shortcuts from ~ to usual locations
    2. Keychain access of API keys, often for AI related things
    3. Set up git user name: git config --global --edit

yadm

I started to use yadm to keep dotfiles in sync. yadm wraps around git and creates the illusion that some files and directories under $HOME are source controlled. Otherwise, it behaves just like git.

  1. brew install yadm
  2. yadm clone ... to clone your dotfiles repo. Or check yadm manual on how to initiate a repo from yadm. I’d suggest having a separate private GitHub repo to track your configuration files.
  3. In the ideal case, that’s all you need to do; you have recovered all the configuration files tracked by yadm!
  4. To track a new file, it’s simply something like: yadm add ~/.zshrc. You use yadm status to check what’s changed. And yadm commit; yadm push to commit and push your changes to your repo on GitHub. It basically behaves the same as git command.
  5. Some additional files I track:
  6. Generate homebrew bundle file with brew bundle dump --describe --file=~/.brewfile. Recover on new host with brew bundle --file=~/.brewfile
  7. ~/.crontab file contains periodical thing I run on a host. Recover on new host with crontab ~/.crontab
  8. Alfred preference files in ~/Alfred.alfredpreferences/

Software Shortlist on Mac

  • Install iTerm2, which is vastly better than Terminal.app, especially if you need to connect to remote servers. Even just for local use, it’s pretty good.
  • Install Ghostty, with is much clearer/faster than iTerm2, with less features as it’s pretty new. For example, there’s no native integration with tmux on remote servers, meaning you can’t map remote tmux operations to local window operations. But if you mainly use local terminal, it is already a good enough replacement of iTerm2. Example configurations: 
    font-family = DejaVuSansM Nerd Font Mono
font-size = 15
theme = Apple System Colors
keybind = cmd+left=previous_tab
keybind = cmd+right=next_tab
keybind = cmd+shift+left=move_tab:-1
keybind = cmd+shift+right=move_tab:+1
keybind = cmd+c=copy_to_clipboard
keybind = cmd+v=paste_from_clipboard
keybind = cmd+i=write_screen_file:paste
keybind = cmd+d=new_split:right
keybind = cmd+shift+d=new_split:down
keybind = cmd+shift+enter=toggle_split_zoom
keybind = cmd+shift+equal=equalize_splits
copy-on-select = clipboard
  • Install Alfred. I use the 1/ multi clipboard, 2/ global hot keys, and 3/ snippets (e.g. having quick access to ASCII art like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, for example).
  • Use zsh, a modern shell.
  • Use Oh My Zsh to customize your zsh. It adds all the cool bars and fonts here and there, and also much better command completion. It does all those largely out of the box.
  • Install HomeBrew, which makes installing software on Mac much easier. e.g. rg, ack, nvim, etc.
  • You will need some fonts to display some weird Unicode codepoints. I use nerd fonts, in particular, DejaVuSansMNerdFontPropo-Regular.ttf.
  • Some small utilities: Horo (timer), Quick View Calendar for dates, Magnet for window control.