Table of Contents
It's been about a year since I published my laptop setup guide. Since then, I've tweaked a few more settings and provisioned a few more laptops.
The original guide. Read it for the bulk of the setup information. This blog post only contains updates.
Native Settings
Everything here is modified within the System Settings app.
- Change your laptop's hostname to something unique. A templated name like
yourname-mbp
is bound to have namespace collisions. - Within the Keyboard section...
- Customize the modifier keys (
Keyboard Shortcuts > Modifier Keys
). I remap the caps lock key to escape. - Go to
Text Replacements...
and remove all entries.
- Customize the modifier keys (
- Within the Control Center, set
Automatically hide and show the menu bar
toNever
. - Within the Lock Screen section, set
Require password after sceen saver begins or display is turned off
toImmediately
. This locks the laptop immediately if the lid closes. - Within the Appearance section...
- Set
Show scroll bars
toAlways
. - Set
Click on the scroll bar to
toJump to the spot that's clicked
.
- Set
- Within the Desktop & Dock settings, set windows to minimize using the scale effect.
- Customize the hot corners. Remove the quick note from the bottom right, and add the notification center to the top right. That way, if you're not using a track pack, you can still easily pull up notifications.
Finder
There are a bunch of finder settings. I loosely follow the steps outlined in this video. Just give it a watch and follow along.
Ignore my stupid blog post and just watch the video.
For reference, this is what my finder window looks like after it's been set up. You can compare to mine as reference.
![](https://andrew.cloud/content/images/2024/07/CleanShot-2024-07-10-at-23.49.22@2x.png)
Apps
Most of the apps in the previous blog post have stayed the same. However, I have added some extras. I personally pay for all of them, but they have free versions that work great too.
- Dropzone 4 to have a place on the menu bar to send items or do quick actions.
- Coconut Battery to monitor battery health.
- AlDente to regulate battery charge.
- UnnaturalScrollWheels to have proper trackpad and mouse scrolling at the same time.
- Bartender 5 to organize the menu bar.
And that's it. You now have a perfectly functional MacBook!
"Between VSCode, WSL, and Intel’s latest desktop chips, I’ve been living with a PC that runs my programming tests faster than an M3 Max, and generally feels like a completely viable alternative to macOS." https://t.co/tP4UQNk1Ss
— DHH (@dhh) February 25, 2024