macOS Setup¶

Originally I wrote this guide to remind myself how to setup my M1 Macbook the way I like it. A few friends and coworkers expressed interest in my setup, so I cleaned up the notes (a bit) and created this guide. You don't need to follow this guide completely, I encourage you to pick-and-choose the pieces you want to use and to tweak things to fit your needs. I also love to see how other people have setup their systems, so please share your configs!

Recommended Software¶

Download and install these following the instructions on their websites:

• Ghostty
• Visual Studio Code
• Homebrew

Command Line Tools¶

Btop++¶

TUI resource monitoring. C++ version and continuation of bashtop and bpytop.

brew install btop

https://github.com/aristocratos/btop

Mosh¶

Better SSH for high latency or unreliable connections.

brew install mosh

https://mosh.org/

mtr (traceroute)¶

TUI traceroute utility.

brew install mtr

https://github.com/traviscross/mtr

nano¶

A small and friendly editor. As of macOS 12.3 nano was replaced with a symlink to pico.

brew install nano

https://www.nano-editor.org/

Nmap¶

Network scanner.

brew install nmap

https://nmap.org/

jq¶

Command line JSON parser.

brew install jq

https://stedolan.github.io/jq/

fq¶

Like JQ but for binary formats.

brew install wader/tap/fq

https://github.com/wader/fq

bat¶

A cat(1) clone with syntax highlighting and Git integration.

brew install bat
brew install eth-p/software/bat-extras

While it's optional, I recommend installing the bat-extras, it's a collection of bash scripts that integrate bat with various command line tools.

To easily format help output from a command, I put the following alias and function in my ~/.zshrc file:

alias bathelp='bat --plain --language=help'
help() {
    "$@" --help 2>&1 | bathelp
}

https://github.com/sharkdp/bat

fd¶

A simple, fast and user-friendly alternative to find

brew install fd

https://github.com/sharkdp/fd

Vim Plugins¶

vim-plug: Minimalist Vim Plugin Manager.

curl -fLo ~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs \
    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim

call plug#begin()
" The default plugin directory will be as follows:
"   - Vim (Linux/macOS): '~/.vim/plugged'
"   - Vim (Windows): '~/vimfiles/plugged'
"   - Neovim (Linux/macOS/Windows): stdpath('data') . '/plugged'
" You can specify a custom plugin directory by passing it as the argument
"   - e.g. `call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')`
"   - Avoid using standard Vim directory names like 'plugin'

" Make sure you use single quotes
Plug 'tpope/vim-sensible'

" Uncomment to enable catppuccin theme
" Plug 'catppuccin/vim', { 'as': 'catppuccin' }

" Initialize plugin system
" - Automatically executes `filetype plugin indent on` and `syntax enable`.
call plug#end()
" You can revert the settings after the call like so:
"   filetype indent off   " Disable file-type-specific indentation
"   syntax off            " Disable syntax highlighting

set termguicolors
colorscheme catppuccin_mocha

https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug

Version Managers¶

There are helpful tools to install and run multiple versions of various programming languages.

Python (uv)¶

An extremely fast Python package and project manager, written in Rust.

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

https://docs.astral.sh/uv/

Python (pyenv)¶

brew install pyenv

https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv

NodeJS (nvm)¶

Once the install completes, be sure to follow the instructions provided and add the required lines to your ~/.zhsrc file.

brew install nvm

https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm

Terraform (tfenv)¶

brew install tfenv

https://github.com/tfutils/tfenv

Developer Tools¶

PostgreSQL¶

Database software.

brew install postgresql

https://www.postgresql.org/

Lefthook¶

Git hooks manager, useful for development.

brew install lefthook

https://github.com/evilmartians/lefthook

Poetry¶

A Python dependency manager and packaging tool.

curl -sSL https://install.python-poetry.org | python3 -

If you chose to install pyenv, I suggest enabling this option so that Poetry will default to the active/global version of Python:

poetry config virtualenvs.prefer-active-python true

https://python-poetry.org/

git-delta¶

A syntax-highlighting pager for git, diff, and grep output.

brew install git-delta

Update your ~/.gitconfig file:

[core]
    pager = delta

[interactive]
    diffFilter = delta --color-only
[add.interactive]
    useBuiltin = false # required for git 2.37.0

[delta]
    navigate = true    # use n and N to move between diff sections
    light = false      # set to true if you're in a terminal w/ a light background color (e.g. the default macOS terminal)

[merge]
    conflictstyle = diff3

[diff]
    colorMoved = default

https://github.com/dandavison/delta

Prettier¶

Code formatter for JavaScript, CSS, JSON, GraphQL, Markdown, YAML.

brew install prettier

https://prettier.io/

hadolint¶

Dockerfile linter, validate inline bash, written in Haskell.

brew install hadolint

https://github.com/hadolint/hadolint

dive¶

A tool for exploring each layer in a docker image.

brew install dive

https://github.com/wagoodman/dive

Kubernetes Tools¶

kubectl¶

Basic Kubernetes command line tools, such as kubectl.

brew install kubernetes-cli

https://kubernetes.io/

krew¶

Krew is the plugin manager for kubectl command-line tool.

Follow the install instructions: https://krew.sigs.k8s.io/docs/user-guide/setup/install/

The list of available plugins can be found here: https://krew.sigs.k8s.io/plugins/

Plugins¶

get-all: Like kubectl get all but really everything

kubectl krew install get-all

kubectx¶

Switch between Kubernetes contexts faster and easier.

brew install kubectx

https://github.com/ahmetb/kubectx

Helm¶

Kubernetes package manager.

brew install helm

https://helm.sh/

k9s¶

TUI for Kubernetes.

brew install derailed/k9s/k9s

https://k9scli.io/

Fonts¶

brew tap homebrew/cask-fonts
brew install font-hack-nerd-font font-meslo-lg-nerd-font font-ubuntu-mono-nerd-font