A guide to set up your Mac and improve your programming experience to another level with Vim/Zsh/Tmux, macOS Apps, Extensions for high productive development

Inspiration

Whenever I got a new laptop, it usually takes me up to 2 hours to re-setup everything again, and I start getting tired and annoyed. Every time I set up my Mac again, I learned something new and cool things that improve my programming experience better.

So, I make a collection of setup and apps to share with you my personal guide of setting up a new Mac for software development.

1. System Preferences

• System Preferences > Trackpad/Keyboard > set up as above images
• iCloud > login to your account
• Filevault: On
• Disable Ask Siri
• Location Services: On (Limited)
• Check software updates
• Messages app > add your Number + email
• App Store > install previously installed applications

2. Terminal

Alfred

• It’s a replacement to Spotlight because it’s way much faster when it comes to search any files: brew cask install alfred

Brew

• Install Xcode: $ xcode-select --install

• Install Homebrew: $ /bin/bash -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

• brew cask install to install an application

iTerm2

• A replacement to Terminal

• Clovis wrote an awesome tutorial on how to set up more in-depth

• A comparison: iTerm2 vs. Terminal

• Install: brew cask install iterm2

Optional: ZSH/Tmux/Vim

• I used this awesome guy’s repo as a template

3. Git

Git has become one of the main tools that every developer should know how to use it. The new Mac usually comes with Git pre-installed.

• Install git: brew install git

• Config git:
  

$ git config --global user.name "Your Name"
$ git config --global user.email "you@your-domain.com"

You will constantly be using Git daily, and SSH will allow you to pull and push to git without re-entering email and password every single time.

• Git already had an article on how to add SSH to your Mac

4. Install Mac Apps with command line

If you’re a fan of command-line, and you don’t want to install apps by going through each of them on Chrome. then you should try mas

• Install mas for quick setup: $ brew install mas

• Search for your app: $ mas search XCode . You will find the app ID for each app

• Copy the App ID into 1 command line: $ mas install <app_id1> <app_id1> <app_id3>

Note: If these apps below don’t have an app ID, then you have to install it from the browser. (Links included)

Work

1. XCode: 497799835
2. The Unarchiver: 425424353
3. Microsoft Word: 462054704
4. Excel: 462058435
5. PowerPoint: 462062816
6. VSCode
7. Postman
8. Docker

Communication

1. Slack: 803453959
2. Notions: 974929595
3. Zoom: 884018914

Entertainment

1. Messenger: 1480068668
2. WeChat: 836500024
3. Line: 539883307
4. Chrome
5. Viber
6. Spotify
7. Open Spotify: This website lets you listen to Spotify music with NO Ads

5. Chrome Extension

You don’t want to install many Chrome extensions unless you want it to “eat” a lot of your RAM or unless you have a powerful computer.

Here are the TOP 6 that I used daily:

1. Adblock Plus: Block all the ads
2. Grammarly: Used to check my grammar when I write essays, blogs, etc.
3. Honey: To find me the best deals
4. Rakuten: Give me cash back when I shop online
5. Redux Dev Tool: For debugging with React
6. JSON View: View JSON on the web browser prettier

6. VSCode Extension

1. Prettier
2. AutoClose Tag
3. Auto Rename Tag
4. Better Comments
5. Debugger for Chrome
6. ESLint
7. Gittens
8. Go
9. HTML Snippets
10. Javascript (ES6)
11. code snippets
12. Python
13. Turbo Console.log
14. dotENV
15. npm Intellisense
16. Path Intellisense
17. Live Server
18. Color Highlight