Translated from 强迫症的 Mac 设置指南, thanks to author: QiXi from Thoughtworks China - fff
I was always thinking about writing this article, to share all the experiences I've learnt from other colleagues. Though there are already some really good books, from which I've learnt a lot also. But I still want to share my own experiences.
In projects, I normally work with 1 to 10 people, and pairing a lot by sharing the same laptop, with external display, and extra mouse, keyboard. I'm mostly working with Java, Ruby, Node.js, Web and etc, and using lots of software from JetBrains, like IntelliJ IDEA, RubyMine, WebStorm, etc.
I know my knowledge is so limited, so I want the opinions from you by sharing you this article. Now days, more efficient way and better tools are still keeping comming, I'll keep updating it, to collect the better ways and tools here, it's my greedy wish. For latest version please visit: https://github.com/macdao/ocds-guide-to-setting-up-mac. Issues or Pull Requests are welcomed. Looking forward to your feedback.
Several points of efficient Mac environment in my opinion:
-
Automate
Take a example, there are several steps to install an application manually:
- Open your browser,
- Search by the application name,
- Open the official site for the applicaiton,
- Find the download link,
- Downloading,
- Install it,
- Some post steps.
But with automatic tools, you only required to do:
- Open terminal,
- Type in commands,
- Wait to be finished.
Automate helps to reduce the steps and increase efficiency significantly.
-
Consistence
When I'm pairing, sometimes the shortcuts or commands are different between each other's laptop. I strongly recommend that, at least in the team, try to keep using the same shortcut and commands(I forget the practice name, there have to be one, please let me know if you get it).
-
Just enough
Enough is perfect. If the system itself provides the function, I won't install any other third party tools.
-
Efficiency
Everything is about efficiency.
For third party applications only simple steps are provided, please go to offial site for detailed installation and instruction documents.
Some sections are marked with [OCD], that means it's my personal preference, take it or ignore it, it all depends on if you like it or not.
OCD(obsessive-compulsive disorder), I didn't mean it, just make fun. Yes, I don't have that disease ;)
Things related with OS X settings.
By default, F1-F12 are special function keys, like adjust screen brightness. You are required to press Fn at the same time, when you need input F1-F12(like IntelliJ IDEA shortcuts). It's not so convenient for developers.
To avoid pressing Fn: go to System Preferences > Keyboard，select Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys in Keyboard tab。
You may see this dialog before, when you try to close files in Sublime Text:
You may notice that the Save button is quite different with the other two, it's BLUE. This kind of blue button is called default button, except triggering by clicking, you also can trigger it by enter.
What else, how to trigger Don't Save without mouse clicking?
Go to System Preferences > Keyboard, select All controls in Shortcuts tab or just press ⌃F7. And the dialog will turn into:
The Don't Save button has borders now, so you can trigger it by space. And also, you can move the focus(blue borders) to other buttons by press tab, you can get rid of your mouse now.
Except the way above, you can also select Don't Save by click ⌘⌫(command+delete). This shortcut means select any button which means 'delete' or 'do not save'.
Of course, you may click Esc to trigger Cancel.
Some lines are missing here. As not helping a lot - fff
Reduce using of Mouse and Trackpad may increase your efficiency.
-
Apple official documents. Like how to move cursor between lines, words and so on.
-
Mac keyboard shortcuts for accessibility features
Apple official documents. The selection of blue button part is from this.
By default Trackpad is triggered by click, but you can change it to tap.
Goto System Preferences > Trackpad，check Tap to click in Point & Click tab.
OS X can speak by：
say helloCombine it with other bash commands using && or ; like this:
brew update && brew upgrade && brew cleanup ; say mission completeAlso you can let it speak almost anywhere by selecting one word and press ⌥+Esc(Alt/Option+Esc). Before that you need goto System Preferences > Dictation & Speech, check Speak selected text when the key is pressed in Text to Speech tab.
Some lines are missing here. As not helping a lot - fff
Dock comes at the bottom of screen as default, but as the resolution is 16:10, we'd better move it to left or right of screen to gain more vertical space.
I use Control a lot, but it's at the left buttom corner, which is quite hard to reach. And I prefer Shift to input capitals, or input lower case and transform them with shortcut, so I use Caps Lock quite few.
So, I change Caps Lock into Control. And I found that lots twers are doing the same thing, may be influenced by HHKB.
Howto: goto System Preferences > Keyboard, click Modifier Keys... in Keyboard tab, in the popup window change the option Caps Lock (⇪) Key: to ⌃ Control.
本条目对于强迫症适用。It's for OCD(obsessive-compulsive disorder)
There are several icons on the Dock by default, I rarely use most of them. And after opening several daily applications, the Dock comes so noisy, and the icons turn to really small. So I remove all the static icons on the Dock, to make space for runing applications.
Finder cannot be removed.
This command can easily hide all static Dock icons instead of removing them one by one:
defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -boolean true; killall DockIt's easy to recovery:
defaults delete com.apple.dock static-only; killall DockThe DownloadsFolder on the Dock will be hidden too
本条目对于强迫症适用。It's for OCD(obsessive-compulsive disorder)
defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool true; killall DockKeychain Access is a Mac OS X application. It can be used to find saved accounts and passwords including Wi-Fi password.
Some lines are missing here. As not helping a lot - fff
Some routine software, and not necessarily related to development.
Package management, official description: "The missing package manager for OS X".
Go to official site for installation steps.
After installation, you only need to run command below to install mysql, gradle, maven, node：
brew install mysql gradle maven nodePS: install brew will download and install Apple Command Line Tools automatically.
Some lines are missing here. As not helping a lot - fff
brew-cask helps you to install OS X Applications. Like to install Chrome：brew cask install google-chrome. Also Evernote, Skype, Sublime Text, VirtualBox, Java7 ...
brew-cask is driven by community, you may raise a pull request when you found any missing or outdated application.
Installation:
brew install caskroom/cask/brew-caskYou would like to search if you not sure if some application is already in cask.
brew cask search java7Some lines are missing here. As not helping a lot - fff
iTerm2 is the most widely used terminal tool, considered as the replacement of Terminal. It provides a group of practical features, including Split Panes. Its default black background makes me throw away OS X' inbuilt Terminal application without any hesitation.
Installation:
brew cask install iterm2Thanks to brew-cask ~
In iTerm2, except the commond shortcuts like ^E(ctrl+E)(find more here). And after some configuration you can have more shortcuts like ⌥B(alt+B), ⌥F(alt+F).
HowTo: go to Preferences > Profiles > Keys, change the option of Left option (⌥) key acts as and Right option (⌥) key acts as to +ESC.
When you open new window/tab, by default you're at user home directory, and need input commands to go somewhere else. If you want to open new window/tab in previous directory, you can set it like this:
Preferences > Profiles, and select your profile('Default' for most of time), go to General tab, check Reuse previous seesion's directory for Working Directory.
If you want to save all the current windows/tabs layout, press ⌘⇧S(command+shift+S) to save the window arrangement. Also you can find this item in the Window menu on the top.(added by fff)
Till now, Terminal should be given up, and turn to use iTerm2.
And in iTerm2, double click will select the according word, triple click will select the current line. Also the selected content will be in your clip-board, no addition ⌘C(command+C) is required.
By default Bash is only white and black, there is no more colors there. And On-My-Zsh brings the colorful world to you. Oh-My-Zsh also brings you a set of plugins and tools, which is quite handy for simplify commands input. In the below you will find that I love it to death.
Go to official site for installation steps.
Plugins I'm using: git z sublime history rbenv bundler rake
Oh-My-Zsh uses Z shell（zsh）, which is quite close to Bash, but it's not Bash.
In Z shell, ~/.zshrc is the most important configure file. Oh-My-Zsh will set the current path into ~/.zshrc as $PATH during installation. As I'm using brew, this is not something that I want to have. With brew, we are not encouraged to customize $PAHT, and by default Oh-My-Zsh already set $PAHT with quite good value:$HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH, in which contains the $HOME/bin, it means we can put customized scripts in $HOME/bin.
so I recommend you to reset the ~/.zshrc:
cp ~/.oh-my-zsh/templates/zshrc.zsh-template ~/.zshrcSince a commit on Jun 17 2016, the
zshrc.zsh-templatedidn't change$PATHany more. Find# export PATH=$HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATHand remove the#to make our life better。
Oh-My-Zsh gets more valuable plugins.
Besides Oh-My-Zsh, there is Oh My Fish，which based on Fishshell.
GNU stow is the super girl(-.-) of symlink management. Mainly it's used to symlink your dotfiles, like emacs，git configuration files of fish/zsh.
Installation:
brew install stow
After installing, we can symlink the dotfiles. The full instructions for stow and dotfiles are here:https://github.com/jcouyang/dotfiles.
After symlinking all your dotfiles to ~/dotfiles, push it to github. There is no worries any more for setuping another new laptop.
Almost everyone is looking for ways to increase their efficiency, like git alias, using git st instead of git status. But it requires some manual configuration, which makes everyone's configuration differ.
Oh-My-Zsh provides a set of system aliases to achieve the same purpose. For example: take gst as the alias of git status. Also the git plugin of Oh-My-Zsh is enabled by default, which means if you're using Oh-My-Zsh, you are having a set of efficient aliases, which is been commonly used globally, isn't that wonderful?!
Some of my frequently used aliases are:
| Alias | Command |
|---|---|
| gapa | git add --patch |
| gc! | git commit -v --amend |
| gcl | git clone --recursive |
| gclean | git reset --hard && git clean -dfx |
| gcm | git checkout master |
| gcmsg | git commit -m |
| gco | git checkout |
| gd | git diff |
| gdca | git diff --cached |
| glola | git log --graph --pretty = format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit --all |
| gp | git push |
| grbc | git rebase --continue |
| gst | git status |
| gup | git pull --rebase |
| gwip | git add -A; git rm $(git ls-files --deleted) 2> /dev/null; git commit -m "--wip--" |
The full list is here: https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/wiki/Plugin:git, or simply run command alias | grep git in Oh-My-Zsh window.
Some lines are missing here. As not helping a lot - fff
In OS X you only can adjust window size by dragging. I've tried lots of window management tools, but most of them have the conflict key mapping(mostly with IntelliJ IDEA). ShiftIt is the apparently rare one without any conflicts.
Installation:
brew cask install shiftitSizeUp is one replacer，share the same main shortcuts with ShiftIt.
Divvy is another replacer, need to purchase through appstore.(added by fff)
For hackers: Slate, configuration reference: http://thume.ca/howto/2012/11/19/using-slate/
Installation:
brew cask install sublime-textOpen file with Sublime Text in command line is quite handy, normally we need to link it first(following:OS X Command Line) with: ln -s "/Applications/Sublime Text 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" ~/bin/subl.
But if you install it with brew-cask, the problem is already sorted by brew-cask, and it will remove the link when you uninstall Sublime Text.
At the same time, Oh-My-Zsh also provides the plugin for Sublime Text: sublime(https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/tree/master/plugins/sublime), which is perfectly compliant with brew installed Sublime Text.
Replacers: Atom, TextMate, Sublime Text 3 etc. For all of them, brew-cask will manage the links for you.
MacDown is a Markdown editor. As Mou doesn't support code highlighting, I switched to MacDown, which supports GFM perfectly.
I like Markdown a lot, and I write articles(include this one) with Markdown, also for slides(reveal.js). Markdown makes me focus on the content itself, and won't waste me too much time on the styles and layouts.
Installation:
brew cask install macdownAfter opening new terminal, how do you get to the working directory? cd xxx or ^R(ctrl+R, bash reverse search), or alias?
z helps you get the target directory easily. Like running z cask in my terminal, it will lead me to /usr/local/Library/Taps/caskroom/homebrew-cask/Casks.
It's quite easy to install, nothing is required to be downloaded, as it's already in Oh-My-Zsh. Open ~/.zshrc, find plugins configuration line like this:plugins=(git), and put z inside the parentheses like:plugins=(git z), then re-initial terminal by source ~/.zshrc, it's there now.
Autojump is a replacer, which requires to be installed by brew.
Vimium is a Google Chrome extension, which turns your chrome into a "hackers's browser", you can operate your Chrome via keyboard.
For installation please go to Chrome Extension Market.
For firefox there is a similar solution: KeySnail.
LastPass is a password management tool, support a second login step, provides plugins for every browser and also OS X desktop version.
The most important thing, it provides command line version, install it by:
brew install lastpass-cli --with-pinentrythen, login into your account:
lpass login you@email.comSo you can copy password or integrate into other commands:
lpass show --password gmail.com -cSourceTree is an outstanding git GUI client by Atlassian. You may try if you want more than command line.
Installation:
brew cask install sourcetreeBrew-cast will add stree to $PATH when installing it. Run stree from terminal will invoke SourceTree open the Git repository under current path. for more: stree --help.
CheatSheet will show a list of all active short cuts of the current application. Just hold the ⌘ for a bit longer.
Installation:
brew cask install cheatsheetThe must have tool for Mac user, comes together with a bunch of workflows, which will extremely save your operating time.
Easy to start, but takes more time to setup your self-defined workflows, but anyway there are already lots of workflows shared by nice people, visit here, choose what you like, and modify it in your way.
Installation:
brew cask install alfredThere is no default JDK any more for new version of OS X, so you need to download and install it before you want to do some Java projects.
Before brew-cask, we are used to download from: https://developer.apple.com/downloads/. But the drawback is that uninstall or upgrades take significant time. For JDK package, which is pkg format, there is no automatic way to uninstall it.
But good news is brew-cask can do it for you:
brew cask install javaIf you need Java-7 or Java-6, you can get from homebrew-cask-versions：
brew tap caskroom/versions
brew cask install java6You can install several versions of JDK in Mac OS X, /usr/libexec/java_home -V will list all of them.
So here is the problem, Which one is the one used by running java or any Java application? normally, OS X invokes the newest version of all those installed JDK versions. But you can change it by set JAVA_HOME:
$ java -version
java version "1.8.0_60"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_60-b27)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.60-b23, mixed mode)
$ JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home java -version
java version "1.6.0_65"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_65-b14-466.1-11M4716)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.65-b04-466.1, mixed mode)You may change JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home into JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6`, which is more widely used.
Some lines are missing here. As not helping a lot - fff
Everyone needs a Ruby version management tool. That's rbenv, which is quite light and can be installed by brew.
Installation:
brew install rbenv ruby-buildThen you need to enable rbenv plugin of Oh-My-Zsh, or you need to add eval "$(rbenv init -)" to ~/.zshrc or ~/.zprofile
Sometimes projects will depend on unique Ruby versions, like: ruby-2.1.0, you should go checkout rbenv-aliases.
brew install rbenv-aliasesAlternatives: RVM, chruby. But as RVM is unable to be installed by brew, and it also changes a bunch of files without any respect, that's why I already gave RVM up. chruby is another light weight tool, and works perfactly with Oh-My-Zsh, it seems someone is using it in production enviroment.
Almost every Rubyist takes bi as alias of bundle install. Oh-My-Zsh provides builder plugin to setup a set of alias, like bi, be. Also allow you to run rspec directly, without any leading be or bundle exec.
For a detailed list please go to https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/tree/master/plugins/bundler.
Zsh shell has special usage for [ and ], so rake task[parameter] will fail, you need to run it like this: rake task\[parameter\] or noglob rake task[parameter]. However Oh-My-Zsh already solves it, using the buildin rake plugin: brake task[parameter].
Be aware of that, put rake after bundler when modifying the plugin settings in ~/.zshrc, for example:
plugins=(git z sublime history rbenv bundler rake)
- Hacker's Guide to Setting up Your Mac
- Setting up a new (OS X) development machine
- 高效 MacBook 工作环境配置 *"Efficient MacBook working configurration", you need google translate
- 程序员如何优雅地使用 Mac？ *"How to use Mac elegantly for programmer", you need google translate also
- 装点你的 Dock：外观篇