Annoyances:

• Mouse

  • System Preferences → Set Tracking speed to max.
  • System Preferences → Set Scrolling speed to max.

• Keyboard

  • Fix slow initial key repeat (great for arrow keys)

  • defaults write -g InitialKeyRepeat -int 10
    

  • Fix slow key repeat (also great for arrow keys)
    • defaults write -g KeyRepeat -int 1:

• Windows

  • AltTab: Replace the built-in window-switching shortcut Commmand ⌘ Tab ⇥ to add previews, hide windows from other spaces, close windows with Control ⌃ w and Control ⌃ q, etc.
  • Don't automatically switch spaces when clicking on the dock.
    • defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool NO
  • System Preferences → Mission Control → Untick When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application.
  • Magnet ($7.99): Basic Windows-like window snapping to screen edges (+ shortcuts). No animations for snapping. Note that BetterTouchTool also embed this feature.

• Sound

  • Auto-mute output audio devices (except Bluetooth) when Mac wakes from sleep. Avoids blasting loud sound when you open your Macbook in public transport. Using Hammerspoon:
    • brew install hammerspoon
    • Download SpoonInstall and unzip it in ~/.hammerspoon/Spoons/
    • Create ~/.hammerspoon/Spoons/init.lua with the following content and then reload Hammerspoon's configuration:

    hs.loadSpoon("SpoonInstall")
  
    spoon.SpoonInstall.repos.devnoname120 = {
      url = "https://github.com/devnoname120/hammerspoon-collection",
      branch = "build",
    }
  
    spoon.SpoonInstall:andUse("AutoMuteOnSleep", {repo="devnoname120", start=true})
  

• Battery

  • System Preferences → Battery → Battery → Tick Low power mode
    • ×2 my battery time, and can't notice any difference in snappiness.

• Dev

  • Using touch id for sudo authentication:
    • Add auth sufficient pam_tid.so to top of /etc/pam.d/sudo
    • In iTerm2, Open settings —> Advanced —> Allow sessions to survive logging out and back in —> No
    • You will need to do that again at every macOS update

• Finder

  • Always display the current path at the bottom:
    • Finder menu → Preferences → Show Path bar
    • Or defaults write com.apple.finder ShowPathbar -bool true
  • Show file extensions:
    • Finder → Preferences… → Advanced → Show all filename extensions
  • Show useful folders in the sidebar:
    • Finder → Preferences… → Sidebar → Add Projects & Personal folders
  • Don't keep open previously previewed files
    • defaults write com.apple.Preview ApplePersistenceIgnoreState YES

• System Settings

  • Disable notifications when screensharing
    • Notifications & focus → Notifications → Untick When mirroring or sharing the display (at the bottom)
  • See Nikita Voloboev's macOS configuration

⚠️ You need to log out and then log back in to apply defaults write changes.

• Performances
  • Fix mds/mds_store/md_worker high CPU usage (Spotlight indexing)
    • System Preferences → Spotlight → Privacy → Add the following paths:

    /usr, /bin, /sbin, /opt, /private, /Library
    /System/{Library, Application Support}
    ~/.cache
    ~/Library/{Caches, Logs, Application Support, Containers, Group Containers}
    

    • You can find more paths to exclude in mds's logs
      • sudo fs_usage -w -f filesys mds
    • You will need to do that again at every macOS update
• Bugs
  • When Macbook Air M1 is sleeping, external screens connected via USB-C keep waking up every few minutes and then go straight to sleep again.
    • Workaround (source):
      • sudo pmset -a tcpkeepalive 0
      • sudo pmset -a powernap 0
      • Disable System Preferences → Battery → Optimized battery charging
      • Disable System Preferences → Battery → Power Adapter → Wake for network access
    • See the reasons of the past wakes
      • pmset -g log | grep 'due to'

Shortcuts:

• General
  • Commmand ⌘ Control ⌃ q: Lock screen
  • Commmand ⌘ Control ⌃ space: Open Emoji finder
  • Commmand ⌘ Shift ⇧ /: Search in the currently focused app's menus
  • See more on Apple's website.
    • All text fields support Emacs-like text manipulation shortcuts.
• Finder
  • Commmand ⌘ Option ⌥ v: Paste copied item and remove it from original location.
  • Hold Option ⌥: Reveal path breadcrumbs.
    • Right click on a breadcrumb to copy path or open in terminal.
  • Commmand ⌘ ↑: Move to parent directory.
  • Commmand ⌘ ↓: Open directory/file.
    • Commmand ⌘ o: Does the same thing.
  • Commmand ⌘ Shift ⇧ g: Go to path.
  • Commmand ⌘ Option ⌥ c: Copy path of highlight file/directory.
  • Commmand ⌘ Shift ⇧ .: Show hidden files.
    • Make it the default: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES.
• Other apps:
  • Check Key Combiner's website.

Multimedia:

• Shottr: Free screenshot app + annotations + OCR zone of screen to clipboard. ❤️
  • [22-04-22] Use v1.5.2 because v1.5.3 randomly crashes.
• IINA: Awesome video player with great UI on top of mpv (way better than VLC).
  • brew install iina
  • YouTube support:
    • brew install yt-dlp # better than youtube-dl
    • ln -s /opt/homebrew/bin/yt-dlp /opt/homebrew/bin/youtube-dl
    • Preference → Network → Custom youtube-dl path → /opt/homebrew/bin/
  • More active and up-to-date fork: IINA Plus
    • brew install iina-plus
    • Already includes yt-dlp
• HandBrake: ffmpeg GUI that helps convert videos.
  • ff·Works (22€): same but way better (more options, better UX/UI)

Productivity:

• Alfred: Spotlight replacement (search, browse, clipboard history, snippets, workflows).
  • TODO: add my workflows
• Spark: Awesome productive email client with first-class multi-inbox, archiving/snoozing/sending later emails, etc. Must-have.
• Fantastical ($43.99/yr): Great calendar app. Event creation using natural language, first-class timezone + weather support
• MeetingBar: Display time until next meeting in the status bar, and allow opening the meeting link directly.
• Karabiner: Remap macOS keys.
  • 🔜 TODO share my config file.
• Finda: Dmenu equivalent that works on everything (open windows, tabs, browser history, etc.).
• Tracker Zapper: Watches the clipboard and automatically get rid of trackers from copied URLs (utm_source, fbclid, etc.).

UI/UX tweaks:

• KeepingYouAwake: Prevent macOS from sleeping (temporarily).
• Dozer: Declutter macOS menu bar by selectively hiding icons.
• Muzzle: Disable all notifications when sharing screen.
• Side Mirror: Show second screen (projector) in a window on the main screen. Useful for presentations
• macOS-key-cast: Display an overlay with macOS keys you type. Useful for recording the screen with QuickTime.
• Lunar: Control the brightness of external screens via DDC (over HDMI/DP/DP USB-C/TB2&3/VGA/DVI). ⚠️ If you use an adapter or a USB-C cable, it needs to forward DDC messages correctly (if it supports DP over USB-C it should be fine).

Dev:

• iTerm2: Way better Terminal than the default one.
  • List of useful iTerm2 shortcuts
• Shell/zsh programs
  • Powerlevel10k: Awesome ZSH theme/plugin. Easy to customize. Works for many shells zsh (default on macOS), bash, etc.
  • mcfly: Awesome shell reverse-search-history replacement for the default clunky Control ⌃ r (aka reverse-i-search).
  • z: Track most frequently used directories and then jump to them easily.
  • SCM Breeze: Add numbered shortcuts to the output of Git, ls, etc.
  • tealdeer: superfast unofficial client for the tldr pages (official client sucks).
    • brew install tealdeer
  • ripgrep: Replacement for find. Blazing fast file search with sane defaults.
  • Zsh antigen plugin manager
    • Plugins (add in .zshrc):
      • Extra command auto-completions: zsh-users/zsh-completions
      • Fish-like grey autosuggestions: zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions
      • Syntax highlight for shell commands: zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting
• Syntax Highlight: Preview source code files with syntax highlighting in Finder's Quick Look (opened when pressing space on a file).
• TextMate: Fast & lean text editor with syntax highlighting. I use it to do quick file edits like I would in the terminal with Vim.
• OpenInTerminal: Open the current Finder folder in a terminal.
• DevUtils ($25/device): hacker toolbox. Convert unix timestamps, base64 decode, URI decode, JSON beautifier, test RegExes, etc.
• Vnc connect: free VNC client that just works.
• ncdu: visualize disk usage tree to find big files

Backups:

• Arq ($49.99 or $59.99/yr inc 1TB cloud): Sane encrypted incremental backups.

Privacy:

• Homebrew
  • brew analytics off
• https://privacy.sexy/

To be reviewed

• Amethyst: xmonad-like tiling window manager

Hammerspoon:

• Script for Windows snapping like Spectacle/Rectangle

⚠️ Requires system integrity protection to be disabled.

Dev:

• redo: interactively create shell function from shell history.

Multimedia:

• SoundSource: Fine-grained by-app sound control for Mac + precise audio EQ

Productivity:

• Typinator: auto-expand user-defined abbreviations.
• Keyboard Maestro: Automate tasks, create macros.
• Responsively: Test a website on many device screen sizes at once.
• Paw: Test REST APIs (Postman alternative).
• Hook: Create local perma-links to anywhere in any documents. Useful for cross-referencing stuff (+ use those links in Obsidian).
• Timing: Monitor used apps/websites/etc. Looks very powerful.
• Presentify: Annotate your screen while sharing it or presenting it to an audience.
• Timing: App-usage time tracking, miles ahead of Apple's native feature

Utilities:

• Day One App: Journaling app. Claims to be e2e encrypted and to protect users' privacy.
• rcmd: Switch to apps directly using a option+letter shortcut. ⚠️ Conflicts with qwerty-fr.
• PDF viewer/annotator
  • Highlights
  • PDF Expert
• espanso: Auto-expanding inline snippets with templating support.