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Configuring your Mac

Formatting the device

If everything went well, we have already formatted the hard disk and installed MacOS.

If not, here are the rough steps to take:

  • Turn your Macbook off if necessary. To do this, press the power button for several seconds.
  • Start your Macbook and immediatly press Command + Option + Shift + R. For some reason, it is always necessary to do this network installation. If you do a regular recovery mode boot, you will end (after wasting a lot of time) with error -2003f.
  • Select "Codifly" as WiFi-network and enter our WiFi-password. Please note that the keyboard layout is in QWERTY. As a result, press Q when typing letter A and press Z when typing W. #Yolo.
  • After the loading screen, first click "macOS Utilities", select the internal disk in the left column and click Erase. Enter "Codifly" as name and select APFS as format. Do not use the encrypted file format (we will enable FileVault later on) and do not choose the case-sensitive format (although better for certain Git-situations, OneDrive does not support it, blame Microsoft).
  • After erasing the disk, close the Disk Utility tool and go back to the main menu, click on "Reinstall macOS" and follow the steps.
  • After some introduction screens, macOS is installed.
  • The system reboots. The remaining steps in the wizard are quite straight-forward.
  • After the wizard has completed, go to Preferences > Sharing and choose "Codifly C-000.XXX" as computer name (see sticker on the backside).

Styling the Terminal

For those unfamiliar with MacOS, the Terminal provides the command line interface. As such, it is similar to the "Command Prompt" in Windows. Press CMD + Space, then type Terminal to open the Terminal.

Since we are all power users (no doubt), we dress up the Terminal to look a bit more horrific. After opening the terminal, go to Terminal > Preferences.

On the tab General, at Open at startup, select New window with profile and in the dropdown select Pro.

On the tab Profiles, select Pro once again in the left column and click on Standard at the bottom-left. In the right section, on the subtab Text, check Antialias text. On the subtab Window, check Shell command name.

The Terminal uses zsh as default shell. When zsh is started as an interactive shell, ~/.zshrc is executed. This file is the ideal place to configure the look-and-feel of the zsh shell. Execute the command below. This enables some fancy colors.

cat >~/.zshrc <<EOL
export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=GxFxCxDxBxegedabagaced
EOL

Brew

Brew is the package manager for MacOS, consider it the "npm" for MacOS. With Brew, we can install terminal and graphical applications in seconds with simple commands. To install Brew, execute the command below. This will also install XCode, the development tools for Apple platforms.

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

To install a Terminal application, execute brew install xxx. To install a graphical application, execute brew install --cask xxx.

General software

Rectangle

Rectangle provides keyboard shortcuts for positioning windows. Once you go Rectangle, you won't go back. The most important shortcuts are ALT + CMD + LEFT and ALT + CMD + RIGHT to move a window to the left or right side of the screen and ALT + CMD + F to maximize a window. Install Rectangle via Brew with:

brew install --cask rectangle

Press CMD + Space, press Rectangle and follow the steps to give Rectangle access to control your machine.

To ensure Rectangle runs automatically on every boot, add it to your login items: go to Settings -> Login Items, click the + button, and select Rectangle.app. This way, your shortcuts are ready every time you start your computer.

Pages, Numbers and Keynote

Unlike Microsoft Office, which costs a small fortune, Apple comes with free applications for text processing (Pages), spreadsheets (Numbers) and presentations (Keynote). Those can be installed via the App Store. Press CMD + Space, type App Store and press Enter. Then, via the search box at the top-right, search and install Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

OneDrive

We store our Management-related files on SharePoint. If you have a management-related position, it might be useful to sync our SharePoint files to your OneDrive. As such, you can easily access and update all files from your hard disk.

OneDrive can be installed via the App Store.

Brave Browser

Last but not least, let's install Brave Browser. Brave is a privacy-focused browser based on Chromium, with built-in ad blocking.

brew install --cask brave-browser

Let's immediately do some configuration in Brave. Open Brave Browser.

It is probably a good idea to add favorites for all Codifly platforms: Office 365, Gitlab, 1Password, Officient... Under View, enable the option Always show bookmarks bar to make sure you can open those platforms with a single click.

If you prefer your browser opening with Google as start page, in the menu click Brave > Preferences. Then, at On Startup select Open a specific page or set of pages. Add https://www.google.be/.

Now, in the menu, go to Window > Extensions. Click on Get more extensions. The extension Markdown Viewer is a must. Note that Brave has ad blocking built in, so Adblock Plus, which was in the past also a must, is not needed.

For developers only: also consider adding User Agent Switcher and React Developer Tools, and make sure that Disable cache (while DevTools is open) is checked in the Brave DevTools' Settings.

Communication

MS Teams

MS Teams is our primary communication platform within Codifly. It can be installed via brew install --cask microsoft-teams

Email

First, add your email account to MacOS if you have not yet done so. Press CMD + Space, type Preferences and press Enter to open System Preferences. Click the blue icon Internat Accounts and add your Gmail account. Afterwards, while we are there, go back to System Preferences, open iCloud and make sure that Search My Mac is selected.

Every Codifly employee gets a personal "Brand"-directory on our network share where he can find his photo, email signature, curriculum vitae... Let's configure the email signature in Google's web mail and in Apple Mail, the email client of MacOS.

To add your email signature to Outlook, open your signature with Google Chrome, select it with CMD + A, and copy it to the clipboard with CMD + C. Then open Outlook Web App in Google Chrome and go to the settings. In the correct field, paste your signature with CMD + V.

Then add your email signature to Apple Mail. Simply open Apple Mail, and in the menu go to Mail -> Preferences. Navigate to the Signatures tab, add a new signature, uncheck the checkbox "Always match my default message font" (important!) and paste the email signature from a Chrome window displaying the HTML-file. Don't forget to add two dashes on top. Note that images will not display in the preview, but that is no problem.

Email signature in Apple Mail

For those having an iOS device, configure the HTML signature with the shake trick.

Other configurations

The Dock

To make sections in the Dock (the horizontal bar at the bottom of the screen), add as many separators as you wish by executing the following command in the terminal.

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="spacer-tile";}' && killall Dock

We suggest we keep a uniform structure, in which we have 4 sections: general, development (if applicable), organization and communication. As an example, see the image below.

Dock

Finally, go to Preferences > Dock, and make the dock a bit smaller. You can disable "Toon recente programma's in het Dock" if you don't want to clutter your Dock with pseudorandom icons.

Finder

If you do not know it by now, Finder is the "Windows Explorer" of MacOS. Let's configure it. Open Finder via Cmd + Space (which is by now considered part of your second nature). Click Finder > Voorkeuren.

On the tab Algemeen, at Toon deze onderdelen op het bureaublad uncheck Harde schijven and check Externe schijven, Cd's and Verbonden servers. At Toon in nieuwe Finder-vensters, select <Your name>.

On the tab Tags, remove all tags in the list via the --button.

On the tab Navigatiekolom, only check the options AirDrop, Programma's, Bureaublad, Documenten, Downloads, <je naam>, Verbonden servers, Macbook Pro van xxx, Harde schijven.

On the tab Geavanceerd, enable Toon alle bestandsnaamextensies and disable all other settings. At Bij uitvoeren van een zoekopdracht, select Zoek in de huidige map.

Now close preferences and go back to your Finder window. In the column at the left, under favorites, move items in the following order: <gebruiker>, Bureaublad, Documenten, Downloads, AirDrop, Apps. Also add your OneDrive folders, if you installed OneDrive.

Printing and scanning

Printing and scanning is easy. In 'System Preferences' search for 'Printers & scanners'. On this page, you can add the Brother MFC-printer like you would any other printer.

The Network Share

We have a network share with Codifly material. It uses the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) and thus can easily be used on Macbooks. Open Finder, and select Ga > Verbind met server.... ABt Serveradres, enter afp://box.gitlab.codifly.be. Then press Verbind. When asked for a username and password, enter the credentials stored in 1Password (search for "Share").

At time of writing, the share is only used for graphical resources, but that might change in the future.

Other system preferences

In Systeeminstellingen, consider the following settings:

  • Berichtgeving: enable Schakel niet storen in wanneer beeldscherm in de sluimerstand staat and disable Toon meldingen op vergrendeld scherm for every application.
  • Beeldscherm: select Geschaald, then select Meer ruimte.
  • Trackpad: disable Opzoeken en datadetectie and enable Tikken om te klikken.

Allround settings

  • Press CMD+Space, and type TextEdit and open the TextEdit app. In the menu, click “Text editor” and then “Settings”. On the tab “New Document”, for “Format”, select “Plain text”. On the tab “Open and Save”, check “Ignore rich text commands in HTML-files”. Now close TextEdit.
  • Open "Systeeminstellingen" -> "Bedieningspaneel" -> "Batterij" and enable "Toon percentage". Next, also in the "Bedieningspaneel" section click "Klokopties" and enable "Toon dag van de week".
  • If you are like me, and you occasionally close Teams or your Mail client because you're CMD + Q-spamming to close everything, consider the following. Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> "Toetscombinaties" -> "Programma's". Click the +-button, and add "Teams"/"Hide Microsoft Teams"/CMQ+Q. Click the +-button again, then add "Mail"/"Verberg Mail"/CMQ+Q. This overrides CMQ+Q for the Teams and the Mail app.

Note: the second field is language dependent, make sure it matches.

Next steps

Follow the security guidelines (see IT Security) and, if you are a developer, the Getting started lessons.