macOS

Documenting useful configuration options for macOS. Some of these customizations will involve the defaults command. See macos-defaults.com for more information.

Dock

Automatically hide the dock to save some vertical space.

defaults write com.apple.dock "autohide" -bool "true"

Reduce the time it takes for the dock to show up.

defaults write com.apple.dock "autohide-delay" -float "0"

Hide the recent applications and documents in the dock.

defaults write com.apple.dock "show-recents" -bool "false"

Run the following command for the changes to become effective.

killall Dock

Editor

Download the ~/.vimrc file.

curl -o "$HOME"/.vimrc "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/notfirefox/vim-config/main/.vimrc"

Finder

Enable the path bar for Finder.

defaults write com.apple.finder "ShowPathbar" -bool "true"

Show folders first in Finder.

defaults write com.apple.finder "_FXSortFoldersFirst" -bool "true"

Always show all file extensions.

defaults write NSGlobalDomain "AppleShowAllExtensions" -bool "true"

Run the following command for the changes to become effective.

killall Finder

Git

macOS automatically creates .DS_Store files all around the file system. This can be annoying, when sharing code with others using a version control system like Git. We can utilize a global .gitignore file, in order to avoid that problem.

Create a global ~/.gitignore file.

echo ".DS_Store" > "$HOME"/.gitignore

Tell Git about the ~/.gitignore file.

git config --global core.excludesfile "$HOME"/.gitignore

Homebrew

Unlike popular Linux-based systems, macOS does not ship with a package manager out of the box. The de facto default package manager for macOS is Homebrew, which can be installed using the following command.

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Your ~/.zshrc file should also contain this to properly load brew at shell startup:

eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

See the Shell section below, which already takes care of this.

Shell

On macOS the default shell is zsh. In order to have some niceties, such as colored output for some commands and Homebrew integration, we will install my custom configuration.

Download the ~/.zshrc file.

curl -o "$HOME"/.zshrc "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/notfirefox/zsh-config/main/.zshrc"

Source the ~/.zshrc file for the changes to become effective.

. "$HOME"/.zshrc