macOS developer

#tutorial #productivity #macos #developer

Hello developers 🧑‍💻, thanks for reading my post 🙏.

Recently I got to spend quite a bit of time finding settings, tools and apps that boost my productivity 🚀 and make my development routine easier ✨.

Note that all of the following are just my personal warm recommendations, and I'd like to hear about any additional tools I may have missed in the discussion section 🎤.

The following preferences ⚙️ allow me to utilize macOS more effectively

System Preferences 💻

Dock & Menu Bar → ☑️ Automatically hide and show the Dock
Dock & Menu Bar → Other Modules → Battery → ☑️ Show Percentage
Accessibility → Pointer Control → Mouse & Trackpad → Trackpad Options… → ️️☑️ Enable dragging
Trackpad → Point & Click → ☑️ Tap to click
Trackpad → Point & Click → Increase Tracking speed
Battery → Power Adapter → ☐ Wake for network access

Finder Preferences 🗂

Preferences → Advanced → ☑️ Show all filename extensions
View → Show Path Bar
View → Show Status Bar
Press shift ⇧ + command ⌘ + . (Show hidden files)

The following tools and applications are free 🆓 and allow me to significantly shorten daily operations

Command-line Tools 🛠

Xcode Command Line Tools is a small self-contained package available for download separately from Xcode and that allows you to do command line development in macOS.
Some of the tools below depend on it, so it is important to install it first.
Press command ⌘ + Space → Type terminal → Run xcode-select --install → Wait few minutes
Homebrew is an open-source software package management system that simplifies the installation of software on macOS.
Open Homebrew page in a new tab → Copy the snippet → Paste it in the terminal → Follow the instructions that the script will display

By installing the rest of the command-line tools via brew, you will be able to keep them up-to-date by running brew upgrade once in a while.

brew install git curl wget jq htop speedtest tldr thefuck fzf bat

git version control system
curl transferring data with URLs
wget retrieving files
jq JSON processor
htop process viewer
speedtest internet connection measurement
tldr commands cheatsheets
thefuck corrects errors in previous commands
fzf fuzzy finder
bat cat with syntax highlighting and Git integration

Applications 📱

Since most apps these days can update themselves automatically, I prefer to install them via their native installer (download then drag to application directory, and if needed remove with AppCleaner) rather than via brew casks, but it is entirely up to you. (see this issue).