My macOS setup

Divjot Singh | Blog | Fri Apr 03 2020

software, macos

Picture of a macbook

Preferences

I dislike macOS's fullscreen mode, so in order to get maximum screen real estate, I autohide menu bar and dock.

Autohide menu bar

Refer to this article.

Autohide dock & disable recent applications

I also like a clean setup, so I keep only essential items in the dock for quick access, for rest I use spotlight.

Refer to this article.

Keyboard stuff

  • Disable cmd+option+space for spotlight history (System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Keyboard Shortcuts)

Spotlight history is of no good use really, and that key combination can be utilized for a better purpose that we'll talk about later.

Screenshot of spotlight keyboard settings

  • Use Caps lock as Escape (System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys)

As a vim user, I'm used to keeping Caps Lock as Escape key.

Screenshot of capslock modifier

  • Turn on key repeating
# Open Terminal.app and past the following command.
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

I don't know why this isn't the default behaviour. I don't have much use for macOS's character suggestions on holding a key.

Expanded TouchBar

I prefer expanded touch bar over app specific touchbar. System Preferences > Keyboard > "Touch Bar shows" - Expanded Control Strip.

Trackpad stuff

Enable tap to click (System Preferences -> Trackpad)

I prefer tap over physical clicks.

Increase cursor size (System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Display)

A big cursor is easier to find and makes things easy to move around.

  • Enable dragging with three fingers (System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Trackpad -> Trackpad Options)
  • Click and hold is worse experience in my opinion.

Application stuff

Configure spotlight to not index a lot of stuff.

In my setup, I don't need use spotlight to open files, so indexing them (cough node_modules cough) is unnecessary waste of resources.

Install ShiftIt

This window management utility is helpful and highly configurable. Configure it to use cmd+option+arrow-key for top/left/right/bottom and cmd+option+space for maximize

Update: ShiftIt isn't optimized for M1 yet, so you can use Rectangle instead.

Install Clipy

Clipboard management of my choice. Configure it to use cmd+option+v for menu.

Update: Clipy isn't optimized for M1 yet, so you can use Maccy instead.

Itsycal

Statusbar calendar of my choice.

dot-files

If you're interested in my dot-files, you can view them here.