Mac Setup

planted 2025-05-23 · last tended 2026-06-25

Personal setup for macOS, staying on Sequoia (v15) until Apple realize that liquid glass is stupid.

Unfortunately, work laptop requires latest and greatest version, so some will be marked for Tahoe (v26) only.

No mouse and keyboard tab can’t focus?

Cmd+Opt+F5 -> Motor -> Full Keyboard Access

General -> Software Update -> Update to latest
General -> About -> Name -> rename to unique and easy to remember name
General -> Date & Time -> 24-hour time -> turn on
Network -> Firewall -> turn on
Appearance -> Dark
(Tahoe) Appearance -> Liquid Glass -> Tinted
Appearance -> Show scroll bars -> Always
Appearance -> Theme -> Colour -> Orange (or depends on the mood)
Control Center -> Menu Bar Only -> Spotlight -> Don’t Show in Menu Bar
Desktop & Dock -> Position on screen -> Left (depends on display arrangement)
Desktop & Dock -> Automatically hide and show the Dock -> turn on
Desktop & Dock -> Tiled windows have margins -> turn off
Desktop & Dock -> Mission Control -> Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use -> turn off
Displays -> Night Shift… -> Schedule -> Sunset to Sunrise
Privacy & Security -> Security -> FileVault -> turn on
Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts… -> Input Sources -> Untick all, these conflicts with ctrl + space in code editor
Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts… -> Services -> File and Folders -> Tick “New iTerm Tab/Window here” (for opening iTerm2 via Finder context menu)
Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts… -> Modifier Keys -> Select keyboard (all keyboards) -> Caps Lock key -> set to Escape
Keyboard -> Dictation -> Shortcut -> turn off

Finder Settings -> Advanced -> When performing a search -> Search the Current Folder

10ten Japanese Reader (Rikaichamp)
Alt or not
Bitwarden Password Manager
Dark Reader
Disable WebRTC
Don’t Fuck With Paste
Export Cookies
I still don’t care about cookies
Link Hints
Minimal Theme for Twitter / X
Old Reddit Redirect
SearXNG
Stylus
uBlock Origin
- Hide YouTube Shorts List
Violentmonkey
- Install personal userscripts as needed - https://github.com/darcien/userscripts/
YouTube Music Volume Fixer

Restore old version from backup.

Use macOS text editing shortcuts (e.g. Opt+<-/-> for word jumps), Settings -> Profiles -> Keys -> Key Bindings -> Presets -> Natural Text Editing

For theming, use presets:

bash -c "$(curl -sLo- https://git.io/vQgMr)"

Catppuccin Mocha (number 97)

(maybe) open Thunder first and close it to ensure profiles dir are created
Unzip the backup profile
In ~/Library/thunderbird/Profiles, replace the <...>.default-release with the backup profile
Open Thunderbird to check if the profile is restored correctly

Install with cask (raycast) or via website.
Disable Spotlight keyboard, Settings -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts… -> Spotlight -> Show Spotlight search -> turn off
Replace Raycast shorcut with Cmd+Space
Hide Raycast menu bar icon
Do not untick all Spotlight search results, it will break Finder group by kind

Setup Homebrow, follow official docs https://brew.sh/

For personal use, might want to install these additional casks:

brew install --cask \
iina \
raycast \
zed

brew install iperf iperf3 nuttcp owamp