Setting Up a New Mac for Development (and general use)

When I bought my new mac I realized there's a whole ton of customizing I need to make it just how my old one used to be. Throughout the week or so it took me to get things right, I documented the process in hopes this helps me in the future, or you.

Photo by Christopher Gower on Unsplash

FYI some of these customization are tailored to my tastes — for example, I don’t like pressing on the mouse pad and use the tap option like on windows laptops, or double for right click/triple drag/quadruple finger swipes…etc.

Also, I’m assuming you already set up your wifi (since you got this far and found my post!!!) and your internet browser — i’m using firefox, your accounts for emails, GitHub, linkedIn, and are past all those passwords you might’ve forgotten after the switch, if not I guess now would be the time.

Setting up your mac book for easy Navigation

Set up tap to click, double tap for right click or secondary click and three finger drag for highlighting and file dragging
Go to:
System preferences> trackpad> Point and click tab
Checkmark the secondary click feature. This allows you to do the equivalent of a right click on a pc
Check mark the tap to click. This will let you click without pressing on the trackpad

—

Then for the three finger dragging:
System preferences> trackpad> more gestures> checkmark enable dragging with the dropdown on ‘three finger drag’
If that option Doesn’t Exist
System preferences> accessibility> trackpad options> checkmark enable dragging>three finger drag

—

For the four finger swipe to switch desktops and app overview (mission control)
Go to
System preferences> Accessibility> Mouse & trackpad > click Trackpad Options > enable swipe between full screen apps then dropdown on ‘swipe left or right with four fingers’

—

Magnify Zoom
System preferences> Accessibility>Checkmark Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom>^Control

—
If you know you will use more than one terminal at a time, you can set up two with different themes and add this preset window
open up both (or multiple terminals)>save window as group>name it and save

And if you want a dark theme and night mode enabled
System preferences> General>choose dark theme

To enable night shift(reduces cool blue hues at night)
System preferences> Displays>Night Shift>set preferences

Now you should be more at home with the trackpad controls

Setting up a Reference desktop

because looking up a reference should only be a four finger’s swipe away

First download references you know you’ll need — I’m using my calendar, a shortcut cheat sheet, Notes, pdf of whatever I’m working on atm

Open up a new desktop with four finger swipe up>add all those references!

CLI Development Related Stuff: git and Terminal

Download an IDE for dev work — I’m currently using atom atm, but Visual Studio and Sublime are great
—

Get git and Xcode-dev tools, download this thru the App Store type ‘git’ in your Terminal to get prompts:

git

If typing git shows you a list of options, it means you already have Git CLI! Proceed to setting up your local account.

—

Setup GitHub Accounts in your Local

git config --global user.name "MyUserName"

git config --global user.email "MyEmailAssociatedWithThatEmail"

You can check if you are connected to to your credentials anytime by typing git config user.name (this should return your user) and git config user.email (this should return your email)

Now you can go into a local folder and either clone a repo, or go to an existing local project directory and initialize the folder to send it to GitHub.

NOTE: doing git clones/pushes/etc on HTTPS is not allowed from local if you have 2factorAuthentication set up. You will need to set up a ssh token and key pair.
Anyways, using git through HTTPS is becoming unpopular (and might get removed!!), so just use the next section to set up SSH tokens and keys .-.

—

Setup SSH Keys for GitHub
these are the steps for a new github account and new device, ie. no previous SSH tokens

Generate a New Key-when you have no previous keys made — Note carefully read before running the commands:
follow this official doc
Then add that key into GitHub
by these steps
And if you have SAML SSO enabled on your account (if you set this up or your organization did)
Then you need to do this to authenticate your key
—

Change colours of the terminal-if you’ll use the terminal for development or the git CLI, the white background might get a bit too much for the eyes, plus who doesn’t love a black and neon theme?

This part of the post got so long, I made another article for it here:

Colour Coding the Terminal (for mac and unix shells)

Web Development Related Stuff: node, nvm, vue, ~./bashrc

Install node package manager — npm and nvm will be installed
>>brew install node

—

Brew not found
if brew is not found just like me :( , well at least these steps are listed below:
$ gcc — version
$ ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
$ brew doctor
$ brew update
Everything should be up to date now
Now install node
>>brew install node
{check versions with $ npm -v and $ node -v}

—

NVM

But we will probably still need nvm -_-‘’ check if you have versions of it with
$ nvm ls
Nothing? Use this ( — is two dashes)
$curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.34.0/install.sh | bash
$ nvm install — lts

Then check the $ nvm ls it should all be there now; IF THIS FAILS AND THE ERROR MESSAGE IS SOMETHING LIKE
…
=> Profile not found. Tried ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.zshrc, and ~/.profile.
…
YOU NEED TO MAKE THESE FILES FIRST
>>touch ~/.bashrc
>> touch ~/.bash_profile,
>>touch ~/.zshrc
>>touch ~/.profile.

Now repeat the $curl and check if nvm worked
***note it might say to close and reopen terminal to use nvm — sometimes that doesn’t work, just follow the inline prompt instead

You can check version of nvm with (two dashes)
>>nvm — version

—

Install Vue.js if you need it (this is a framework for web dev)
npm install -g @vue/cli

You can check if you have vue with
vue --version

—

And you will probably need the specifics of the project you are working on, so best to follow those setup docs now

You might also want to download browser specific addons/extensions — I’m using ad blocker and honey, just search them up on your browser’s addon section

If you are doing dev work you will probably need to install inspectors and dev tools

I also recommend installing a photo editor such as GIMP/Krita/Photoshop

That should be all the essentials, hopefully your new Mac is now a bit more comfortable
And since I probably forgot to add a dozen other important features, please comment below so others can find them!

Happy making
:)

REFFS: https://medium.com/@thucnc/how-to-show-current-git-branch-with-colors-in-bash-prompt-380d05a24745