Setting up a new macOS machine

I’ve recently had to set up a new macOS machine. I don’t trust syncing, so I do it manually. I’ve heard that macOS syncing works great these days from a few people, but I still prefer to set up a new machine manually. It might be just bad experiences from the past.

I have two reasons for the manual setup. First, it forces me to keep notes on software I install and configurations I make to the operating system and applications. Secondly, over the years the machine will accumulate a lot of unused software and settings. I like to start fresh every year or two. My notes have the essentials. If I set up a new machine and notice that an application or setting is missing, I update the notes.

I’ve mentioned to a coworker that I have notes on macOS setup and she asked if I could make it public.

App Store

The first thing I install and the only app I download from the App Store is Divvy, a window manager. I know there are others, but I’ve been using this one for more than a decade and it works just fine.

The second thing is Bitwarden password manager.

Homebrew

The next thing I install is Homebrew, a package manager for macOS. I use it to install pretty much everything else.

Firefox

Then I install my favorite browser, Firefox.

brew install firefox

Sign in to Firefox Account. That installs my favorite Firefox additions:

• Dark Reader
• DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials
• Facebook Container
• uBlock Origin
• Unhook
• Croatian and English dictionaries

Applications

Then I install other apps I use regularly.

brew install 1password ack android-file-transfer deezer git-review google-chrome mr neovim node@16 p7zip ruby sync visual-studio-code vlc yousician zoom homebrew/cask/docker

Applications:

• 1Password - Password manager.
• ack - grep-like source code search tool.
• Android File Transfer - Transfer files between Mac and Android.
• Deezer - Music streaming.
• git-review - Submit changes to Gerrit for review.
• Google Chrome - Browser.
• mr - Multiple Repository management tool.
• Neovim - Vim-based text editor.
• Node.js - Programming language.
• 7-Zip - File archiver.
• Ruby - Programming language.
• Sync - File storage in the cloud.
• Visual Studio Code - Text editor.
• VLC - Multimedia player.
• Yousician - Learn to play an instrument.
• Zoom - Video communications.
• Docker - Containers all the way down.

Terminal

I make a few minor tweaks to the Terminal.

• General > On startup, open > New window with profile: Homebrew
• Profiles > Homebrew > Text > Font > Andale Mono 14

TextEdit

I don’t use TextEdit much, but when I use it, I only need plain text editing.

• New Document > Format > Plain text
• New Document > Font > Plain text font > Menlo Regular 14

macOS

I update macOS and check Finder preferences and System Preferences. I usually need to make a few tweaks.

Browsers

I prefer that browsers download to Desktop instead of Downloads folder, so I’ll make the change in Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

SSH

I mostly follow GitHub’s Generating a new SSH key and adding it to the ssh-agent page.

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "computer-name"
eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
ssh-add -l

Upload the public key to Gerrit, GitHub and GitLab.

Add Gerrit’s, GitHub’s and GitLab’s fingerprints to the known_hosts file.

cp ~/Documents/github/zeljkofilipin/dotfiles/.ssh/known_hosts ~/.ssh/known_hosts

Dotfiles

I don’t have such a huge investment in my dotfiles repository as some people I know, but I still find that repository very valuable. It makes copying configuration from one machine to another trivial.

mkdir -p ~/Documents/github/zeljkofilipin/
git clone git@github.com:zeljkofilipin/dotfiles.git ~/Documents/github/zeljkofilipin/dotfiles

cp ~/Documents/github/zeljkofilipin/dotfiles/.ssh/config.macos ~/.ssh/config
cp ~/Documents/github/zeljkofilipin/dotfiles/.gitconfig ~
cp ~/Documents/github/zeljkofilipin/dotfiles/.gitignore_global ~
cp ~/Documents/github/zeljkofilipin/dotfiles/.mrconfig.macos ~/.mrconfig
cp ~/Documents/github/zeljkofilipin/dotfiles/.zprofile ~
cp ~/Documents/github/zeljkofilipin/dotfiles/.zshrc ~

mr

I use mr to automatically update more than 90 repositories every day. On a clean machine, the tool will clone all repositories.

mr u

MediaWiki-Docker

I use MediaWiki-Docker for the local MediaWiki development environment.

Fresh

I use Fresh to run MediaWiki tests on my machine. When the tool is installed, download the container.

fresh-node -env -net

Visual Studio Code

Did I mention I don’t trust much in syncing? So, I Copy Visual Studio Code configuration file from dotfiles.

cp ~/Documents/github/zeljkofilipin/dotfiles/Library/Application\ Support/Code/User/settings.json ~/Library/Application\ Support/Code/User/settings.json

I really like a few extensions:

• Code Spell Checker
• ESLint
• GitLens
• markdownlint

Neovim

I prefer editing text in Vim. These days I usually use Neovim in Visual Studio Code. To use Neovim in Visual Studio Code install the VSCode Neovim extension.

On macOS, h, j, k and l movement keys may not repeat in visual mode when held. This is the fix.

defaults write com.microsoft.VSCode ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

Jenkins Job Builder

This is an optional step. It’s needed only on a machine that will use Jenkins Job Builder.

cd ~/Documents/gerrit/integration/jenkins-job-builder/config
pip3 install tox

Create an API token.

Create the jenkins_jobs.ini file:

[job_builder]
allow_duplicates=True

[jenkins]
user=zfilipin
password=API_TOKEN
url=https://integration.wikimedia.org/ci/
query_plugins_info=False

Reviewers

I would like to thank Kosta Harlan for reviewing the article and for advice on how to make it better.