Easily setup new MacBooks

https://catalins.tech/how-i-setup-new-macbooks/

40•cmpit•4h ago

Comments

bombcar•3h ago

I used to hand-setup each new Mac, but lately (last decade or so; gosh this M1 Pro is absolutely ancient) I just let the migration assistant do the needful.

Storage is too cheap for me to spend time optimizing it anymore. I’m sure I have cruft somewhere, but it doesn’t bother me.

cmpit•3h ago

I get that. Personally, I'm a bit weird because I don't like to bring all the stuff from the previous machine (documents, files, etc.). I like to start fresh and only install a couple of apps / configure some settings.

bombcar•3h ago

Understandable - it gives you a chance to do "spring cleaning" and decide what you really want/use.

cmpit•3h ago

Exactly, haha. If something's important enough, it'll find its way to the new machine. :-D

ojhughes•3h ago

> I just let the migration assistant do the needful

but will it revert back if things go wrong?

bombcar•3h ago

It leaves the "source computer" alone, so if it blows up you can always just start again.

I never trade in my old computer, even if I'm going to sell or get rid of it (donate) I keep it around for a month or so to make sure everything's working.

timothevs•2h ago

Dear, this was gold.

phinnaeus•2h ago

It reverts back and it does it at its earliest.

frizlab•3h ago

I have an open-source script which installs all my conf https://github.com/Frizlab/frizlabs-conf

cmpit•3h ago

Thanks for sharing it. Will deffo have a look and pick some stuff for my config.

sandreas•3h ago

Jeff Geerling has a phenomenal ansible playbook to setup his macs:

https://github.com/geerlingguy/mac-dev-playbook

broshtush•3h ago

nix-darwin is a thing, and like all nix tools. It tackles this exact problem

gbrindisi•3h ago

I do this too. Nix is incredible, until it isn’t and then I regret using it so much.

I’ll probably use something dumber for the next machine, and keep nix for servers and local vms.

phinnaeus•2h ago

Highly recommend keeping Nix to your NixOS machines. IYKYK

dankobgd•3h ago

Just use Ansible, it's the best for installing and configuring things

ghusto•3h ago

I'm always a little upset when I read posts excited about configuring things, where they've missed the obvious tooling that's designed for it. Not sure why, but it makes me sad.

blame-troi•2h ago

Obvious to whom? We don’t all know everything. Also, rolling your own can be an interesting learning exercise.

bhouston•2h ago

I think the lessons in this article are still great and you can automate them via ansible. E.g. install brew, run brewfile, apply default config, etc.

mcgrath_sh•2h ago

Professionally? Sure. Personally, I don't want to learn and maintain ansible for something I do once every 5-7 years. I basically diffed the defaults and got the settings I need to change in my script. I then add or remove them as I tweak things (infrequently). The rest of my shell script is a Makefile I use cross platform for making directories and stow-ing dotfiles.

frizlab•1h ago

No. I tried, the person from which I initially based my conf repo[1] tried too[2], we both went away from it (w/o communication between us). We both realized Ansible is good for managing many machines in a professional environment, but waaaay overkill to manage the configuration of a single machine (or two or three), as well as incredibly obtuse in its syntax.

[1] <https://github.com/Frizlab/frizlabs-conf> [2] <https://github.com/wincent/wincent>

enescakir•3h ago

When you search for "dotfiles" on GitHub, you'll find plenty of good script examples for setting up a new computer. Since Apple doesn't provide good documentation on what you can configure with "defaults" variables, these examples are a goldmine.

cmpit•3h ago

That's how I found some to be honest. :-)

montroser•2h ago

PSA: "setup" is a noun, and "set up" is the verb you're looking for.

cmpit•2h ago

Noted, thank you!

corv•2h ago

The missing magic incantation to create your Brewfile:

brew bundle dump

bhouston•2h ago

Thank you!

bitslayer•2h ago

Ah ha! I had searched the article to see if there was a way to do that. Because while it would be awesome to have a file like this, creating it sounded like a pain.

iorekz•1h ago

sweeeet

rcarmo•2h ago

I have https://github.com/rcarmo/ground-init - which I also use for Macs, although via a bit of a hack right now. I should update it to a brewfile-like setup...

Anyway, my $0.02 is that doing fully automated installs on Macs is a fast track to having weird Finder and settings bugs (if not worse), so I mostly just install packages and very seldom (if ever) apply settings via the CLI -- I've had Apple break things across too many OS releases to find that a worthwhile long-term strategy, and most of the time I'd rather just use Migration Assistant (across Macs with equivalent OS versions) or configure settings manually for a new OS release.

Edit: just went and updated the above script to support brew/cask installs on macOS. Settings can go into the runcmd section.

kartikarti•2h ago

Just in case anyone is lost in all the `defaults write ...`, I really recommend https://macos-defaults.com/

It's a really nice overview for (almost) all of the options.

bhouston•2h ago

Is there any shell/bash extensions that just allow you to use LLMs easily from the command line? Basically like warp but just a simple extension instead of a full iterm replacement?

moribvndvs•1h ago

I use a setup script that installs brew, a brewfile, runs chezmoi to setup terminal and defaults, pulls some secrets/keys out of 1Password, and good to go, other than manually having to log into certain things. Everything in a personal dotfiles repo. I do have to occasionally diff my brewfile and terminal config and push that up, I should probably spend a little time figuring out how to automate that.

joeyagreco•1h ago

The best way to do it!

I have a file that sets my MacOS Defaults: https://github.com/joeyagreco/dotfiles/blob/main/.macos

And a file to remap some keys: https://github.com/joeyagreco/dotfiles/blob/main/.macos_key_...

And apply the remaps: https://github.com/joeyagreco/dotfiles/blob/b5b819c9bcde2e3a...

emchammer•1h ago

Why are macOS keyscan codes 11 digits long?

frizlab•1h ago

Probably modifiers in the binary number, where a specific bit means something. That gives very large numbers in the end.

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Easily setup new MacBooks

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