I decided to do a clean install on my new [work] Mac, rather than just copying everything across from my old one. I thought I’d note down some of the things I installed, in case it comes in handy for anyone else (particularly new Mac users).
I’ve mostly ignored common cross-platform stuff like DropBox, 1Password etc, and setting up things like git and ruby. If you just want to quickly set up a Mac for ruby development, Thoughtbot’s laptop project (or Adam’s fork) might be the way to go.
If you’ve got any other can’t-live-without Mac apps that I might have missed, let me know!
From the app store:
- Collective (clipboard history)
- Display Menu (set monitor resolution from menu bar)
- Dragon Drop (intermediate drag-and-drop holder)
- Caffeine (stop your Mac sleeping during presentations etc)
- Hardware Growler (notifications for hardware events)
- ControlPlane (perform operations when switching network etc)
- Dash (all sorts of offline API docs)
- Tweetbot (the best Twitter client)
- ReadKit (RSS, Feedly, Instapaper etc client)
- Pixelmator (much cheaper than Photoshop!)
Other apps:
- iTerm2 (a better terminal)
- MacVim
- Homebrew (package manager)
- Bartender (Hide/organise menu bar items)
- iStat Menus (Monitor CPU, memory etc in the menu bar)
- f.lux (adjust screen colour and brightness at night)
- Source Code Pro (my favourite coding font)
- Pow (zero-configuration rack server for development)
Packages from homebrew (see above)
brew install direnv dos2unix elixir git mysql node phantomjs postgresql qt redis sqlite ssh-copy-id the_silver_searcher tig youtube-dl
Hidden settings
Show ~/Library in Finder:
chflags nohidden ~/Library
Enable copying from quick look preview windows:
defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection -bool TRUE; killall Finder