Setting Up A New Mac

From Rest of What I Know

Every now and then I set up a new Mac and I forget all the things I do. This is a list so that setup is fast.

Initial Environment[edit]

  1. Google Chrome
  2. Homebrew

Default Web Browser[edit]

Set it to Chrome instead

Screenshots Folder[edit]

Then set the Screenshots folder to ~/Pictures/Screenshots by hitting Cmd + Shift + 5, then Options, then Other Location... and create and select the folder.

Shell[edit]

  1. Ghostty since it's a super-fast terminal emulator
    1. Ghostty Configuration
  2. oh-my-zsh to make zsh enjoyable
  3. fzf
  4. ripgrep
  5. mise allows managing different versions of runtimes
  6. neovim
    1. Set EDITOR to nvim

Text Entry[edit]

Now you can hold j to scroll down

Set up Caps Lock[edit]

First install Karabiner Elements

Disable Caps Lock Delay

Then, map Caps Lock to Escape

You can map this in MacOS without Karabiner, but since KE makes it easy to disable Caps Lock Delay might as well do this here

LLM Assistants[edit]

  1. Claude Code
  2. Codex
  3. Gemini

Productivity Tools[edit]

  1. Slack