MacOS Setup Guide

GUI Apps:

Cyberduck
Firefox
Google Chrome
iTerm2
Little Snitch
Microsoft Office
Tunnelblick
Visual Studio Code
VLC
Wireshark - temporarily removed new build required to fix issue requiring Rosetta 2 see here

CLI APPS:

AppStore Apps:

Xcode

Prerequisite

It is best practice to start from a clean slate which include a clean wipe of the machine to ensure a clean/fresh install. Depending on your level of paranoia this would include wiping a brand new machine as well. Possibly the most important detail would be to turn on Filevault. You will only be prompted for this during the inital machine setup after you've entered you iCloud details otherwise after going through the intial setup prompts you can enable afterwards see here. Afterwards, perform the following to setup the machine:

Install Xcode or Xcode Tools (Homebrew Requirement). In atleast v4.2.4 or higher it appears the installer will automatically install Xcode Tools if required
```
xcode-select --install
```
Install Homebrew

Update $PATH in .bashrc to include Homebrew binaries. Ensure Homebrew binaries come first as this will be important to ensure packages such as python3 and pip3 use the Homebrew binaries for these over the built-in system versions
```
export PATH=/opt/homebrew/bin:$PATH
```
then
```
source ~/.bashrc
```
Install Python3
```
brew install python3
```

Install Ansible

python3 -m pip install --user ansible

Update $PATH in .bashrc as this is where the Ansible binaries are installed

export PATH=$PATH:~/Library/Python/3.11/bin

then

source ~/.bashrc

Create a directory to store repositories in and clone the repo

mkdir ~/Documents/Code
cd ~/Documents/Code
git clone https://github.com/johnsoga/MacOS.git
cd MacOS

Installation

Installing Applications

All applications listed above will be installed using the apps.yml playbook

ansible-playbook -i ansible_hosts.txt apps.yml

Configuring the Dock

Customizations on the docks animations & layout are done using the dock.yml playbook

ansible-playbook -i ansible_hosts.txt dock.yml

Automator Automations

In general trying to automate setting MacOS/OSX System Preferences is a bit of a hit-or-miss game filled with trial and error. While some options can be reliably set using the defaults command, a popular example here, this can involve logging out or resetting the machine which is not desirable. Even more so there is not a 1-to-1 mapping of System Preferences to plist's to be updated via defaults leaving some configurations that seemingly cannot be set that way. To me this leaves the better approach to be using the tools(however irritating they maybe) that Apple has provided, put simply Automator. I've created an Automator application that can be double-clicked to install that will go through and set various System Preferences namely:

Track Pad

Look up & data detectors (Disable)
Secondary click/Two-finger right-click (Enable)
Tap to click (Enable)
Scroll direction: Natural (Disable)
App Expose (Enable)

MenuBar

Battery Percentage in Menu Bar (Enable)
Show Spotlight in Menu Bar (Disable)

Security

Require password immediately after sleep (Enable)
Firewall: Turn on (Enable)

cd automator
unzip SystemPreferencesSetup.zip
open SystemPreferencesSetup.app

Post-Installation

Open Little Snitch to finish installation and activate

Disable Game Center

Personally I don't use it outside of my phone, navigate to: System Settings > Game Center > Sign Out

johnsoga / MacOS