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The 50(+) Steps I Go Through Setting Up My Brand New Mac
I’ve already made a similar list years ago, but it has changed quite a bit so I felt that it needed a refresh. These are all the steps I go through. Only very few are mandatory for everyone, most of them are just how I like my mac to be. You can probably have a totally working mac for anything you want to do with less than 20 of these steps, but I feel like I’m missing something if my mac doesn’t have most of the things listed here.
- Log In to my iCloud account*
- Make sure not to select use the iCloud account as login password*
- Install System Updates*
- Download Dropbox to sync passwords over (using 1Password)
- Set up iCloud Keychain and sync over Internet Accounts section*
- Go through all the System Preferences and change everything (that you can change) to the same as other mac [I usually have both macs one next to each other to make this step easier]
- Install Alfred. Change the keyboard shortcut to ⌘SPACE, replacing Spotlight
- Start Xcode download (will take a few hours)
- Login to Dropbox
- Install 1Password and VSCode (my main writing app) + 1Password Mini
- Open Terminal, look in disbelief at the awful theme, close it. Proceed to download iTerm and install it.
- Install Firefox and add uBlock for Firefox as an extension, also add the 1Password extension
- Install TextExpander
- Open terminal and run
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
to show hidden files - Sync Alfred, Safari and Firefox settings
- Install Keyboard Maestro
- Set up TextExpander e Keyboard Maestro using previous exports
- Install homebrew
\curl -fsSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable
- Export installed homebrew packages from the other mac and install them1
- Install rvm
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
- Install latest version of ruby
gem install cocoapods fastlane
-
Install SSH keys for everything (Github, Gitlab):
- Generate a key pair using
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "mail@mail.com"
- If it has a custom name add it manually
ssh-add /Users/valentinourbano/.ssh/githubSSHKEY
, in any case, move it in the~/.ssh/
folder. - Check if it works using
ssh -T git@github.com
- Generate a key pair using
- Install Jekyll and Gatsby
- Install CleanMyMac, Fantastical, f.lux, Bartender, iStatMenus, Amphetamine, Hazel, Timing and Transmit
-
Install Unity and Android Studio
- Mandatory Step
-
I don’t have a full export handy but the main things are: Node JS (with nvm), Express, flutter, python, tensorflow, ImageMagick, git, autojump, LAMP Stack + Postgres, 7zip. ↩