Setting Up my Mac Mini

Starting the year with a thoughtful upgrade, I decided it was time to level up my tech game—and what better way to start than by upgrading my trust old laptop? I initially thought a MacBook Air, a natural upgrade, would be a good choice, but after reading reviews about the Mac Mini, my decision was clear. I ordered a new Mac Mini at the tail end of last year and received it in the second week of January. Since then, I have been exploring various Mac setup articles and videos to optimize my system. In this article, I will list all the apps and modifications I made on my new Mac Mini and include references at the end.

Mac mini specification

Chip: Apple M4
Memory: 16 GB
MacOs: Sequoia 15.2

MacOS settings

Apple ID: Sign in
Appearance: Dark mode
MacOS update: Settings -> General -> Software Update
Keyboard:
- key repeat = fast, delay until repeat = short
- Turn off autocorrect in Keyboard
- Shortcuts: copy picture of selected area to clipboard -> Cmd+E
- Disable "Capitalize word automatically"
- Disable "Add full stop with double-space"
- Disable "Use smart quotes and dashes"
- Disable "Add period with double-space"
Dock: Hide and show dock, reduce size, Remove everything from the Dock except: Finder, System Preferences and Trash
Disable user interface sounds.

Finder:

Show Library, show hidden files, show path to dir
Prune the excessive sidebar bookmarks
create “Projects” folder and pin
To get the Home folder in the finder, press CMD + SHIFT + H and drag the home folder to the sidebar.

# show Library folder
chflags nohidden ~/Library

# show hidden files
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

# add pathbar to title
defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool true

# restart finder
killall Finder;

Take screenshots as jpg (usually smaller size) and not png
```
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
```

Basic developer tools

Homebrew :
- Homebrew installs the stuff you need that Apple (or your Linux system) didn’t. “To install, drag this icon…” no more.
- Homebrew Cask installs macOS apps, fonts and plugins and other non-open source software.
```
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)" 
```
Oh My Zsh: Oh My Zsh is a delightful, open source, community-driven framework for managing your Zsh configuration. It comes bundled with thousands of helpful functions, helpers, plugins, themes, and a few things that make you shout..."Oh MY ZSH!"
```
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
```
mactop: A terminal-based monitoring tool "top" designed to display real-time metrics for Apple Silicon chips. It provides a simple and efficient way to monitor CPU and GPU usage, E-Cores and P-Cores, power consumption, and other system metrics directly from your terminal!
```
brew install mactop
```

VSCode: Primary IDE to build and debug applications

Extensions:

Python
Pylance
Python Debugger
MagicPython
Jupyter
Jupyter cell tags
Jupyter slide show
Remote SSH
Even Better TOML
json
yaml
Gitlens
AutoDocstring
Code spell checker
Ruff
Todo Tree
Prettify Json
Prettier
Dracula theme

Sublime: Simple code and text edits
```
brew install --cask sublime-text
```
uv for python management: don’t install python the normal way. no conda, no brew python. UV for Python… (Almost) All Batteries Included
```
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
source $HOME/.local/bin/env.fish
uv python install 3.12
```
Javascript
- node: A runtime environment that allows you to run JavaScript on the server side
```
    brew install node
```
- npm: The default package manager for Node.js. It helps developers install, manage, and share libraries and tools for JavaScript projects.
```
brew install npm
```
- yarn : An alternative package manager to npm. It offers faster dependency installation, better offline support, and deterministic builds
```
brew install yarn --ignore-dependencies
```
github desktop : I confess I prefer the GUI more than CMD - simplified the dev workflow significantly. though it doesn’t quite make you feel like a coding ninja.
OrbStack as a Docker replacement, seems lighter & faster
wget: retrieves content from web servers.
```
brew install wget
```

Browser Settings

Chrome: For web development
```
brew install --cask google-chrome
```
Chrome extensions: (tied to Chrome account)
- Paywall blocker
- adblock: Block ads on YouTube and your favorite sites for free
- privacybadger: automatically learns to block invisible trackers.
- refined github: Simplifies the GitHub interface and adds useful features
- google docs offline: Edit, create and view your documents, spreadsheets and presentations – all without Internet access.
- display anchors: Displays anchors for all content in the current web page without breaking the layout.
- video speed controller: Speed up, slow down, advance and rewind HTML5 audio/video with shortcuts
- ublock origin:An efficient blocker: easy on memory and CPU footprint, and yet can load and enforce thousands more filters than other popular blockers out there.
- uBlacklist: Blocks sites you specify from appearing in Google search results
- whatfont: The easiest way to identify fonts on web pages.
- Morpheon Dark: A minimalistic dark theme without any distractions
- CrossQuery: Enhanced Google search experience with summaries from reddit and other websites
- zotero: Save references to Zotero from your web browser

Productivity

Raycast: an extendable launcher to replace spotlight. Why Raycast is a must have for Productivity
```
brew install --cask raycast
```
Obsidian:
- A personal knowledge base and note-taking application that operates on Markdown files.
- iCloud can be used to sync vaults between iOS and macOS
```
brew install --cask obsidian
```
zotero: collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research
```
brew install --cask zotero
```

AI app installations

superwhispr: 'just talk' to your mac, it's way better than typing.
llama.cpp: performs inference on various large language models
```
brew install llama.cpp
```
ollama: a lightweight, extensible framework for building and running language models on the local machine.
```
brew install --cask ollama
```
lmstudio: Yet another app to run local LLMs
```
brew install --cask lmstudio
```

Media

VLC: free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files

Other Applications

Google Drive: Syncing documents, files, media, etc.

brew install --cask google-drive

Logi Options+: Logitech mice and keyboard settings for my MX keys mini and M650L
Discord : instant messaging and VoIP social platform
kindle App: Read kindle books