New MacBook Setup

I need to setup new machine from time to time, and I always forget all the things that need to be set up. So, here it goes.

Hardware

Ideal:

  • ANSI Keyboard, since the tilde/backtick character is below ESC; the small Enter key is acceptable.
  • 48 GB of RAM and 2 TB of disk space for VMs

Minimum:

  • Make sure to buy MacBook with the ISO International English (kansainvälinen englanti):
    • It has big “Enter” key when compared to ANSI
    • Don’t go for British English: it has GBP character in place of #
  • At least 36 GB of RAM and 1 TB of disk space, because of VM

During installation

Make sure to enable encryption: turn on FileVault during the installation, or afterwards. Also,

  • Enable Location services, but only share the location with Home, Maps and Wallet.
  • Disable Siri

Initial setup

Then, make sure both the OS and the apps are up-to-date; turn on everything in Settings / General/ Software Update / Automatic Updates.

System Settings:

  • Mouse:
    • turn off Natural scrolling
    • Tracking speed: 2nd fastest
  • Trackpad:
    • Scroll & Zoom / Natural scrolling: turn off
    • Tap to click
    • Tracking speed: 4th fastest
  • Accessibility / Pointer Control / Trackpad Options / Dragging style: Three-finger Drag
  • Keyboard
    • Keyboard Shortcuts / Function keys / Enable “Use F1, F2, etc”
    • Text input / Edit… / All Input Sources:
      • Disable “Correct spelling automatically”, “Capitalize words automatically”, “Show inline predictive text” and “Add period with double-space”
  • Control Center
    • Sound: always show in Menu Bar
    • Battery: Show Percentage
    • Spotlight: Don’t Show
  • Enable Desktop & Document folder syncing over iCloud
  • Desktop & Dock:
    • “Dock” / Minimize windows using: “Scale effect”
    • “Dock” / “Position on screen”: “Left”
    • “Desktop & Stage Manager” / Click wallpaper to reveal desktop: set to “Only in Stage Manager”
    • Hot Corners…: disable all hot corners
    • “Tiled windows have margins”: turn off
  • Battery / Options
    • “Prevent automatic sleeping on power adapter”: on
    • “Optimize video streaming”: off
  • General
    • Storage: “Empty Trash Automatically”: enable
  • Lock screen
    • “Require password”: “After 5 seconds”

Finder / Settings:

  • General: Show “Hard disks”
    • Drag’n’drop the “Macintosh HD” from desktop to Finder favourites

Install from the App Store:

  • Commander One
  • UTM
  • Libre Office
  • Slack
  • Magnet?
  • BBEdit
  • Infuse
  • Magnet (to be able to move windows between monitors)

Install other software:

Mouse

To disable the idiotic accelerated mouse wheel scrolling (which doesn’t work at all in UTM and sucks in Parallels too), download and run the LinearMouse app; then go to “Scrolling” and set:

  • “Scrolling mode” to “By Lines”
  • “Distance” to 3

Find more at UTM #3417.

Commander One

Go into its Settings > Hotkeys:

  • “Go to enclosing folder” : ⌫
  • “Compress file with options”: ⌘P
  • “Extract file”: ⌘U
  • “Equalize Panels”: ⌘=
  • “Go to Home”: ` (back tick)
  • “Change drive in left panel”: ⌘F1
  • “Change drive in right panel”: ⌘F2
  • “Search”: ⇧⌘F

Settings / General / Edit Files With: select BBEdit.app

Then, enable “Show Hidden files”.

Parallels/UTM

See Virtual Machines on MacBook for steps to setup Parallels/UTM.

Fixing Keyboard Backtick/Tilde

The ISO English International keyboard has one huge disadvantage: the tilde/backtick key is located above “Option” ⌥ instead of below “Esc”. We’ll fix that using Ukelele:

  • Install Ukelele and run it
  • File / New from current input, and make sure the “English / ABC” keyboard is selected. This creates a keyboard bundle which may host multiple keyboards, but we’ll only need one. The “ABC Copy” keyboard name is OK.
  • Double-click on the +- key below ESC, and type in the backtick character.
  • Press shift, then double-click on the +- key below ESC, and type in the tilde character.
  • Save the bundle.
  • Using Finder, copy the bundle to /Library/Keyboard Layouts (for all users), or ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts (for current user only).

Reboot, and add the “ABC Copy” keyboard.

Uninstall Ukelele.

Fixing Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys

Create the file ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict with the following content:

{
    // Option+uparrow moves 30 lines up, emulating pgup
    "~\UF700"  = (moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:, moveUp:);
    // Option+downarrow moves 30 lines down, emulating pgdown
    "~\UF701"  = (moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:,moveDown:); // page down - move down 30 lines.
    // The same, but with selection
    "~$\UF700"  = (moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:,moveUpAndModifySelection:);
    "~$\UF701"  = (moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:,moveDownAndModifySelection:);
}

You’ll need to restart individual apps for them to pick up the new configuration.

Links:

Activity Monitor

  • View / Dock Icon / Show CPU History
  • Press ⌘3 to show CPU history window, ⌘4 to show GPU history
  • Switch to “Memory” tab, to see the memory pressure chart.

Global Keyboard Shortcuts

Open “Settings”, “Keyboard”, “Keyboard Shortcuts”:

  • “App Shortcuts” and add:
    • “Zoom” set to ⌘M (aka Maximize). This kills Minimise but I’m not using that one anyways.
  • Modifier Keys
    • Caps Lock as ^ Control
      • This allows Magnet to have

Safari

  • General
    • Safari opens with: All windows from last session
    • New window open with: Empty page
    • New tabs open with: Empty page
    • Homepage: blank
  • Tabs:
    • Always show website titles in tabs
  • Search:
    • Search engine: DuckDuckGo
  • Advanced
    • Enable “Show full website address”
    • Default encoding: UTF-8
    • Enable “Show features for web developers”

BBEdit

  • “View / Window Appearance / Hide Sidebar”
  • Settings
    • Menus & Shortcuts
      • Uncheck: #!, Subversion, Git, Scripts, Clippings

Magnet

Enable “Synchronize settings via iCloud”.

More

If you want to go all crazy and completely unify Linux+Mac shorcuts, see Unifying Mac+Linux keyboard, or making Mac work like Linux.

Written on March 14, 2024