OSX Survival Guide

Bootstrap

strap is the successor of boxen created by the current homebrew maintainer Mike McQuaid.

Download the Script

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MikeMcQuaid/strap/master/bin/strap.sh > strap.sh

Configuration

Edit the strap.sh script, e.g. using vim, and uncomment and fill up the following environment variables:

# STRAP_GIT_NAME=
# STRAP_GIT_EMAIL=
# STRAP_GITHUB_USER=
# STRAP_GITHUB_TOKEN=
# CUSTOM_HOMEBREW_TAP=
# CUSTOM_BREW_COMMAND=

• STRAP_GIT_NAME and STRAP_GIT_EMAIL is to setup git user.name and user.email, and contact info on login screen.
• STRAP_GITHUB_USER is to setup git github.user and to access your dotfiles and homebrew-brewfile repositories.
• STRAP_GITHUB_TOKEN is needed to allow homebrew to reduce the rate limit of brew search command and to tap your private repositories (the token can be generated at GitHub > Settings > Developer settings > Personal access tokens, with scope repo, user).
• CUSTOM_HOMEBREW_TAP and CUSTOM_BREW_COMMAND are optional, to add your personal homebrew tap and custom brew command which will be run at the end of the bootstrap.

The customized strap.sh can be automatically generated at https://macos-strap.herokuapp.com/,which asks for your authorization on GitHub.But I prefer to edit the script manually.

strap is idempotent, so you can run it first,adding custom dotfiles and brewfile repositories later,then run it again.

Run

/bin/bash strap.sh

Keyboard

In System Preference > Keyboard > Modifier Keys,Control and Command keys can be swapped,and Caps can be used as an additional Escape key.

Karabiner-Elements is a powerful keyboard modifier for osx.For example, it supports PC-style keyboard shortcuts.However, some of them do not work, and result in inconsistent keyboard shortcuts.It is recommend to swap Control and Command through Karabiner-Elements’ simple modification instead.And import certain complex rules like Alt-Tab from it individually.

Mouse

Unselect “Scroll direction: Natural” in System Preferences > Mouse.(The direction may be natural to touch screen, but it is not natural for mouse at all.)

Trackpad

Select “Tap to click” in System Preferences > Trackpad.

Lock Screen

Press Control+Shift+Power to turn off and lock screen.Alternatively, you can put the Screen Lock icon on touch bar (System Preference > Keyboard > Touch Bar).

Turn off Internal Display

When the power adapter is connected:

1. Close the lid to put laptop to sleep.
2. Reactivate laptop via external input devices, e.g. keyboard.

Tiling

Long press the restore button, then select tiling in drop-down menu.

Another way is activating mission control.Then move one window to another full screen window in another virtual desktop.

Drag the edge between two tiling windows to adjust the size of the two windows at the same time.

Virtual Desktops

Press Ctrl-Left/Right to switch among virtual desktops.

Press Ctrl-Up/Down to show an overview of desktops or go back to normal mode.

Finder

By default, ~/Library is hidden.To reveal it in Finder temporarily,hold the Option key, then click the Go menu,and the Library fodler is revealed in the dropdown menu.

To permanently reveal the Library folder in Finder, run the following command:

chflags nohidden ~/Library/

BTW, most applications’ user configuration files are in ~/Library/Application Support.

Safari

To enable developer tools, select “Show Develop menu in menu bar” in Safari > Preferences > Advanced.You can also change the default encoding to UTF-8.

There are several vi shortcuts extensions for safari, for example, sVim.

sVim can be configured via sVimrc via the extension settings in Safari.I mapped d and D to close and undo close tab:

" Shortcuts

map "d" quit
map "shift+d" lastClosedTab

Google

Google accounts can be added to the Mail.app.Except for the gmail, other osx applications can also sync with Google account:

• Contacts
• Calenders
• Messages (with Google Talk)
• Notes (via gmail, tagged as notes)