~/.dotfiles

What works for me. Might not work for you. Slowly evolved over the years, inspired by these fine people: @garybernhardt, @mislav, @tpope, @mihar, @lukerandall.

Philosophy

1. Use built-in tools when possible, switch to something else when it hurts.
2. Extend functionality instead of replacing it. For example: someone who (only) knows vanilla vim should still be able to pair with me, because all the original bindings are still available.

How do files in this repository end up in my home directory?

Using a few jj commands, documented in the chapter Finally, dotfiles. This allows us to sidestep symlinks almost completely, with the exception of a few sensitive files that we store in iCloud Drive. Credit to @hjr3 for the guide. (Previously, I relied on a similar technique based on git).

Setting up a new computer

Take a deep breath through your nose and savour the smell of your new computer.

Follow the operating system's first time start-up wizard.

System Settings

Use the search function to find the relevant settings. Things get moved around more often than I set up new computers, so the exact labels might differ.

• Check for updates and wait for them to finish installing.
• Change the computer name..
• Make sure FileVault is enabled and store the recovery key (comes enabled by default on new computers).
• Disable Screen saver.
• Trackpad: Enable Tap to click.
• Desktop & Dock:
  • Uncheck Close windows when quitting an application.
  • Uncheck When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application.
  • Check Group windows by application.
• Privacy & Security: Give Full Disk Access to Terminal.app.
• Accessibility:
  • Under Display: Check Show window title icons to have persistent proxy icons.

Keyboard

• Customize modifier keys (for laptops).
• Set keyboard repeat rate and delay to Fast and Short respectively.
• Under Spelling and prediction:
  • Uncheck Correct spelling automatically.
  • Uncheck Capitalize words automatically.
  • Uncheck Add period with double-space.

Sound

• Slide Alert volume to minimum.
• Uncheck Play user interface sound effects.

Finder

• Change to column view (⌘3)
• Under General:
  • New Finder windows show select your home directory.
  • Uncheck Open folders in tabs instead of new windows.
• Under Tags, uncheck everything.
• Under Sidebar edit as needed.
• Under Advanced:
  • Uncheck Show warning before changing an extension.
  • Uncheck Show warning before removing from iCloud Drive.
  • Check Remove items from the Trash after select 30 days*.

Finally, dotfiles

Use the one-liner from brew.sh to install Homebrew. The script will take care of installing Command Line Tools for Xcode. Run brew install jj so we can move on to setting up dotfiles.

alias jj=/opt/homebrew/bin/jj
echo '*' > ~/.gitignore
jj git init
jj git remote set-url https://github.com/mfilej/dotfiles.git
jj git fetch
jj bookmark track main@origin
jj rebase -d main@origin

Note

After rebasing, jj will detect a conflict because earlier we manually created a .gitignore file. You can resolve the conflict by accepting the suggested restore command as mentioned in the error message.

At this point jj status should look clean.

Now that Homebrew has installed the fish shell we can set up Terminal.app.

• Under Settings → General → Shell opens with enter the value /opt/homebrew/bin/fish.
• For the chosen profile:
  • Under Shell:
    • Set When the shell exits: Close if the shell exited cleanly.
    • *Ask before closing, Only if there are processes other than the login shell and: enter -fish.
  • Under Keyboard, check Use Option as Meta key.

Open a new Terminal window and the following to your $PATH:

fish_add_path /opt/homebrew/bin/ /opt/homebrew/sbin/ ~/.bin/

And clear the default fish greeting:

 set -U fish_greeting

Open a new Terminal window one more time (or just run fish) and check $PATH to make sure the above worked.

With $PATH in place, we can install everything from the global Brewfile:

brew bundle --global

Note

QuickLook plugins installed via Homebrew are quarantined. Follow these instructions for removing the quarantine attribute: https://github.com/sindresorhus/quick-look-plugins

Finally, install mise to ~/.local/bin:

curl https://mise.run | sh

Launchbar

trash /Users/miha/Library/Application\ Support/LaunchBar/{Actions,Snippets}
ln -s ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Sync/LaunchBar/{Actions,Snippets} /Users/miha/Library/Application\ Support/LaunchBar/

Configure indexing as follows:

• For Safari Reading List, Safari Top Sites, Safari iCloud Tabs:
  • Check Access items via sub-search only.
• Do the inverse for Emoji.
• Indexing the iCloud Drive directory is complicated. Out of the box you won't be able to access all its contents via LaunchBar nor will you be able to limit indexing like you can for regular directories. To work around these issues, disable the default index, then manually re-add it as a regular folder. Under Options, limit Search Scope to Search 2 Subfolder Levels and set Search for to Folders.

Screenshots

To avoid littering your desktop with screenshots, set up a dedicated directory:

mkdir ~/Screenshots
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Screenshots

Safari

• From the Extensions pane, install and enable extensions
• Under Advanced check the following options:
  • Check Show full website address
  • Check Show features for web developers

Mail

• Under Viewing:
  • List Preview: None
• Under Composing
  • Message Format: Plain Text

sshd

Edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config as follows:

PermitRootLogin no
PasswordAuthentication no
PermitEmptyPasswords no
ChallengeResponseAuthentication no

Then restart the daemon:

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist