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.

Git default push to current branch

git config push.default current --global

Oh My ZSH with Auto Suggest

Oh my ZSH

zsh-autosuggestions plugin

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 Rectangle

This window management utility works with newer versions of macOS (even though now macOS supports tiling, it still sucks). Configure it to use cmd+option+arrow-key for top/left/right/bottom and cmd+option+space for maximize

Install Maccy

Clipboard management of my choice. I've started accepting the default options for my peace of mind.

dot-files

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