My macOS setup

Just copy-paste this into your freshly installed Mac's terminal 🚀

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL -H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' https://raw.githubusercontent.com/krystof-k/my-macos-setup/main/setup.sh)"

My macOS setup

Apps

Essentials

🌍 Google Chrome

browser free

I use Chrome, but you should try Safari.
📝 VSCode

text editor open source

I've switched from Atom, but still not sure whether it's better.
📂 Keka

file archiver must have free

Maybe a better alternative to The Unarchiver?
🔐 Bitwarden

password manager free / $

Great multiplatform, open source and (hopefully) secure password manager.

Productivity 🚀

📌 Magnet

window management must have $

Resize windows like a breeze.
☕ Coca

prevent sleep must have free / $

Give your Mac some cocaine & prevent it from sleeping.
🔠 aText

text expander must have $

A quick way to write special characters, often used phrases or signatures. Also see my favorite snippets.
☀️ Flux

blue light reducer free

Thanks to native Night Shift not a must have anymore, but I still prefer Flux.
🌜 Lunar

external display brightness free

Cool tool that can control brightness of external displays through DDC protocol. I used to use NativeDisplayBrightness, but this seems much better.

Communication

👥 Slack

team communication free

Slack for work…
💬 Messenger

messenger DIY

…and Messenger for personal communication, wrapped by Nativefier into a desktop app (see below).
💬 Telegram

another chat open source

Also Telegram.

Office

📝 Microsoft OneNote

notes free

I can't imagine my digital existence without two things: Gmail and OneNote.
📎 Microsoft Office for Mac

office $$$

Microsoft rules the world…
🎨 Adobe Creative Cloud

office & creativity $$$

…and Adobe too (especially Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign & Acrobat).
📊 Pages, Numbers & Keynote

office free

When you don't need Microsoft (and it's free).
📐 Sketch

design $$$

When you need to draw something.

Useful tools

🔧 Homebrew

package manager open source

The missing package manager for macOS. Can be used to install (almost) all of this with one script.
🐤 Cyberduck

FTP client free / $

Connect to any protocol you can imagine.
🔨 AppCleaner

uninstall apps safly free

No junk files when removing apps.
🐺 Gifox

GIF screencast free / $

Quickly record & share screencast in GIF.
Sourcetree

GUI for Git free

For those who don't like terminal.
📡 Microsoft Remote Desktop

RDP client free

Because sometimes, you need Windows.
🚇 Tunnelblick

OpenVPN client open source

When you need to be somewhere you are not.

Media

🎵 Spotify

music free / $

And don't forget there is also a web version you can use to cast to Chromecast from Chrome browser.
🚧 VLC

video must have open source

Everyone needs a video player and there isn't any better.
👂 Shazam

what's playing free

What's playing at the café?

Drivers

I need mainly Logitech drivers for my mouses and keyboards. Unfortunately, Logitech is a bit chaotic, so I need two apps: Logi Options for MX Master 2S and Logitech Control Center for Performance MX.

Tricks

Keyboard shortcuts

macOS has tons of useful keyboard shortcuts. Here are my favorites:

cmd ⌘ + option ⌥ + shift ⇧ + V
paste and match style

Special characters for Czech keyboard

option ⌥ + shift ⇧ + ů
ellipsis …
option ⌥ + -
en dash –
control ⌃ + option ⌥ + tab ⇥
tab
option ⌥ + shift ⇧ + N or + H
quotation marks „“
option ⌥ + R
Euro symbol €

My favorite snippets for aText

Here are some of my favorite snippets for aText.

Note: you can also use the native expansion function (go System Preferences → Keyboard → Text), where the expansions are synced by iCloud also to your other devices, what is super handy for some of the shortcuts (especially for characters like … you cannot type with default keyboard on iOS at all). But those expansions aren't working in all situations as aText is, so I keep using it for all those I want to use on Mac.

Superscript & subscript numbers
Add all the superscript (⁰¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹) and subscript (₀₁₂₃₄₅₆₇₈₉) Unicode number characters as e.g. 2superscript abbreviations.

Keyboard shortcut for switching app Wwindows

By pressing cmd ⌘ + tab ⇥, you can switch apps on macOS by default. I set another keyboard shortcut option ⌥ + tab ⇥ to switch between app's windows.

Go to System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Keyboard & Text input → Move focus to next window in application and add this Windows-like shortcut.

Change keyboard shortcut for quitting apps

You can quit apps with command ⌘ + Q on macOS by default, which is quite close to command ⌘ + W you close just one window. Chrome for example has nice Warn Before Quitting option, but other apps don't: so for apps you don't want to lose data accidentialy, it is a good idea to override this shortcut in System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Application Shortcuts with command ⌘ + option ⌥ + Q for example.

Try pressing `option ⌥` everywhere!

option ⌥ key is magic. Try to press it all the time and watch the options changes. Here are my favorites:

When switching desktops in Mission Control, press option ⌥ to display all close buttons immediately.
When opening an unsigned app, then right click the file and click open while holding option ⌥: voilà, you can start the app now. So now you can launch probably the only useful app for Touch Bar on your Mac.

Finder tweaks

Display opened path. Click View → Show Path Bar. Now you can option ⌥ or command ⌘ double click to open a folder in new window/tab.
Show folders size. Click View → Show View Options and tick Calculate all sizes.

Add spacer to dock

To add spacer between apps in dock, run:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{"tile-type"="spacer-tile";}'

To add spacer between files, run:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{"tile-data" = {}; "tile-type"="spacer-tile";}'

To add small spacer, use small-spacer-tile:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{"tile-type"="small-spacer-tile";}'
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{"tile-data" = {}; "tile-type"="small-spacer-tile";}'

Spotlight shortcuts

I used to use Alfred, which has useful commands for quickly shutting down or locking your Mac. If you want something similar for Spotlight, take a look there.

Auto mount network drives

Open a network drive in Finder: click Go → Connect to Server and don't forget to save credentials to keychain. Then go to System Preferences → Users & groups → Login items and click plus button and select the mounted network drive and tick Hide. Now the drive will always mount on login.

Symlink iTunes backups to NAS

After you had done the previous step, you can symlink iTunes backup folder to NAS. Simply go to terminal and run ln -s "/Volumes/YourNAS/Backup/Folder" "~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup".

App from any web

Thanks to Nativefier, you can pretty easily turn any web into a desktop app. First, install Nativefier (assuming you have Homebrew already installed):

brew install yarn
yarn global add nativefier

Now let's create for example Messenger app:

curl 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/krystof-k/my-macos-setup/master/nativefier/messenger.js' -o messenger.js
nativefier "https://messenger.com" --title-bar-style hidden --inject messenger.js --internal-urls 'https://www.facebook.com/checkpoint/.*'
mv Messenger-darwin-x64/Messenger.app /Applications/Messenger.app
rm messenger.js

Apps I'm still looking for

A great Markdown editor. I've been using Typora, now I'm trying Caret, but still not happy about either.
Notepad. The only app from Windows I miss every single day. TextEdit launches sooo slowly and you have to hit ⌘ + N every time, VSCode is even worse and tyke is only in the menu bar.
Menu bar icons management. I've been using Vanilla, but it is so buggy and Bartender is too expensive.

Setup script

To set up everything, just copy-paste following into your freshly reinstalled Mac's terminal:

source <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/krystof-k/my-macos-setup/master/setup.sh)

https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/how-to/preview-with-cloudflare-tunnel

krystof-k / my-macos-setup

My macOS setup

My macOS setup

Apps

Essentials

Productivity 🚀

Communication

Office

Useful tools

Media

Drivers

Tricks

Keyboard shortcuts

Special characters for Czech keyboard

My favorite snippets for aText

Keyboard shortcut for switching app Wwindows

Change keyboard shortcut for quitting apps

Try pressing `option ⌥` everywhere!

Finder tweaks

Add spacer to dock

Spotlight shortcuts

Auto mount network drives

Symlink iTunes backups to NAS

App from any web

Apps I'm still looking for

Setup script

About

Languages

My macOS setup

My macOS setup

Apps

Essentials

Productivity 🚀

Communication

Office

Useful tools

Media

Drivers

Tricks

Keyboard shortcuts

Special characters for Czech keyboard

My favorite snippets for aText

Keyboard shortcut for switching app Wwindows

Change keyboard shortcut for quitting apps

Try pressing option ⌥ everywhere!

Finder tweaks

Add spacer to dock

Spotlight shortcuts

Auto mount network drives

Symlink iTunes backups to NAS

App from any web

Apps I'm still looking for

Setup script

About

Languages

Try pressing `option ⌥` everywhere!