Kaplan’s MacOS Setup

I've found myself sending my tips and configurations to friends and colleagues so many times, I decided to create this repo to make it easier for me to share my setup.

This is a guide for people who are new to Mac, or for people who are looking for a better setup.

This is a work in progress, I will add more stuff as I go.

If you are unfamiliar with Mac

What you need to know:

Full screen apps sucks, don’t press the green maximize button.
Almost everything you used to use Ctrl for, is now Cmd
Home + End (goto start / end of line) → Cmd + Arrow keys
Switch language → The default is Ctrl + Space, I suggest changing it to Option + Space since Ctrl + Space is reserved for vscode autocompletion.
Don’t use the dock to launch apps, get used to do everything with Spotlight (default) or Raycast (recommended) by pressing Cmd+Space
Cmd + W closes windows, Cmd + Q closes apps
- Apps can stay open even when there are no windows
  
  Its common to open an app (say, WhatsApp) and close its windows, the app will remain open, it just won’t have any windows.
Finder (mac’s version of Explorer.exe) sucks, don’t use it unless you have to, prefer using the terminal.
- If using my configuration, use br to find directories.
When you are in terminal - you can use open <path> to open the path in finder / default app for this file.
- For example, I can open the current working directory by entering open .
- Or open an image using open myimage.png

Settings to change

Settings → Keyboard:
- Key repeat rate to Fastest
- Delay until repeat to Shortest
- Keyboard Shortcuts
  - Input Sources
    - Change to Option + Space
Finder
- Settings → Advanced
  - Show all filename extensions
- Change view to list and then:
  - Right click → Show view options → Always open in list view → Use as default

Recommended apps

Name	Description
Raycast	The holy grail of all tools, a must have launcher, it handles 1. Application launching 2. Windows switching 3. Windows management 4. Base64/Hex encode-decode 5. Easy to use MFA 6. Clipboard history 7. Calculator & converter 8. More!
AltTab	A better CMD+Tab, it switches between windows instead of apps.
Iterm2	A much better terminal. Recommended profile: Default.json
CapsLockNoDelay	For some reason there is a delay when you press the caps lock key to activate it, this tool disables it. Also open source and is written by @gkpln3 🙂
MonitorControl	Allows you to control brightness and volume of external monitors through the usual macos keys.
OnlySwitch	Tons of switches for the task bar - also includes sleep prevention
Itsycal	Small calendar for the taskbar.
Grab2Text	OCR for screenshots.

Terminal stuff

Name	Description	Install command
brew	Package manager (like apt)	`/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"`
fzf	Fuzzy search	`brew install fzf`
jless	Like `less` but for json / yaml files	`brew install jless`
bat (batcat)	Like `cat`, but with syntax highlighting	`brew install bat`
oh-my-zsh	Better terminal	`sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"`
qlmarkdown	Quick look (space in finder) for markdown files	`brew install qlmarkdown`

Raycast

After you install Raycast, remove the Spotlight keybinding, and bind Raycast to cmd+space You can bind commands to key shortcuts from the raycast menu.

I recommend binding the following commands to a key shortcut:

Name	Shortcut
Clipboard History	`cmd + shift + space`
Search Emoji & Symbols	`ctrl + cmd + space`
Window Management / Left Half	`ctrl + option + left`
Window Management / Right Half	`ctrl + option + right`
Window Management / Maximize	`ctrl + option + up`

Recommended Raycast plugins

Enter “Store” in the Raycast prompt

Base64
Hexlify (by @gkpln3)
2FA
Kill Process
Port Manager