My Mac OS setup and applications

3 logos: command line, apple and application

My Mac OS setup and the best applications I use as a Web Developer

Table of content

Disclaimer
Usage
- Where to find the right tool?
My Hardware
Setup shell
Command Line Apps
Applications
Mac preferences
- Dock
Web Applications
Inspiration
Icons and images
Licence

Disclaimer

I have been always passionate about tools. I always loved experimenting until I can find the right tool for the right task. Being a Front-End Developer requires to know the tools that exist and choose the one that will perform the task faster and better.

Based on hours of research and testing, I'm sharing all the applications I believe suits the best my work and daily workflow. It's a living MacOS configuration that, I hope, will also save you time for you to enjoy life more!

Usage

I tried to keep the right order you should also follow to install packages and applications on your Mac (particularly the setup shell part)
Some tools are free and some are not. I'm lucky to have the ability to pay for licences and subscriptions. But if you are not in that situation, 1) You will find free alternatives in the "Alternatives" section of most of the tools, 2) you don't need a paid tool to do an amazing work. Just choose the best tool that suits you and your situation.

Where to find the right tool?

Product Hunt - By far the best and well-know website where you can find almost everything you need. You will sometimes find a badge ![Upvote on Product Hunt][product-hunt] that redirects to the Product Hunt page. Show some ❤️ to the makers!
AlternativeTo - I regularly use AlternativeTo but find it limited and not always accurate. The "ups" are most of the time not relevant or doesn't reflect what people prefer the most. It's a great place to start if you are looking for a list of alternatives though.
Slant and stackshare - Slant and Stackshare are kind of similar but Stackshare is more developer tools focused. It's a nice source of information to compare apps / web apps.

My Hardware

Personal Computer: 13" Late 2017 Macbook Pro with Touch bar.
Personal Monitor: LG 34UM69G-B 34" 21:9 UltraWide

Personal Keyboards:

At Home 1: Keychron K3 optical brown switch
At Home 2: Ducky One 2 RGB TKL

Mouses:

Accessories:

Setup shell

Xcode 11

Xcode is required for some applications to run. So having Xcode updated just remove the issue of not being able to install some apps.

xcode-select --install

Homebrew - The Missing Package Manager for macOS

$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

With Homebrew comes brew-cask which will allow to install applications with the command line.

Useful commands for Homebrew

brew update                         # Fetch latest version of homebrew and formula.
brew search {app name}              # Searches all known Casks for a partial or exact match.
brew install {package name}         # Install a package
brew info --cask {app name}           # Displays information about a given Cask
brew install --cask {app name}        # Install the given cask.
brew cleanup

Cakebrew (optional) - A GUI for Cask

brew install --cask cakebrew

ZSH - An alternative shell to Bash

brew install zsh

Add this to my ~/.zshrc

export HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS="--appdir=/Applications"

Oh My Zsh - Framework for managing your Zsh configuration

Verify that ZSH is correctly installed

zsh --version

Additionally, Zsh should be set as the default shell. Run echo $SHELL from a new terminal to confirm. Expected result: /usr/bin/zsh or similar

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Check if Oh My Zsh was correctly installed.

Command Line Apps

⚠️ Some of the following packages are not essential but highly recommended. Some applications may depend on the installation of these packages.

GNU Coreutils - An essential package with basic tools such as ls, rm...

brew install coreutils

Wget - To download data from the web and ftp, easier than curl

brew install wget

Tree - To create beautiful indented listing of files

brew install tree

tree -L 1 # to output only the root directories and files

Nmap - A powerful command line network discovery utility

brew install nmap

The Silver Searcher - Really fast code searching tool

brew install the_silver_searcher

jq - Lightweight and flexible command-line JSON processor

brew install jq

Youtube-dl - A command line alternative to Airy

brew install youtube-dl

youtube-dl -f best 'link-of-your-own-youtube-video'

FFMPEG - To convert videos in multiple formats

brew install tesseract-lang && brew install homebrew-ffmpeg/ffmpeg/ffmpeg --with-fdk-aac --with-librsvg --with-libsoxr --with-libssh --with-tesseract --with-libvidstab --with-opencore-amr --with-openh264 --with-openjpeg --with-openssl --with-rubberband --with-webp --with-zeromq --with-zimg --with-srt --with-libvmaf --with-libxml2 --with-game-music-emu --with-libbluray --with-libbs2b --with-libcaca --with-libgsm --with-libmodplug --with-openssl@1.1 --with-rtmpdump --with-speex --with-two-lame --with-wavpack --with-xvid

More details here

blueutil - CLI for bluetooth on OSX

brew install blueutil

Speedtest-cli - The command line version of Speedtest.net

brew install speedtest-cli

Imagemagick - You can do almost everything to edit/convert images and pdfs

brew install imagemagick

DisplayPlacer - Programmatically reorganize your screens layout

brew tap jakehilborn/jakehilborn && brew install displayplacer

Fonts - Installing some fonts

brew tap homebrew/cask-fonts

brew install --cask \
    font-fira-code \
    font-source-code-pro font-source-code-pro-for-powerline \
    font-source-sans-pro

MAS - Install App Store apps from the command line

brew install mas

mas search {app name} # To search for an app

Ruby (rbenv) - To manage multiple versions of Ruby

brew install rbenv ruby-build rbenv-default-gems rbenv-gemset
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc # Apply changes
    
rbenv install {version}

nvm - Easily manage your node versions

⚠️ (never use brew to install nvm)

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.35.3/install.sh | bash

Add these lines in the $HOME/.zshrc file:

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && . "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm

And these lines to automatically switch your node version based on the nvmrc file.

# place this after nvm initialization!
autoload -U add-zsh-hook
load-nvmrc() {
  local node_version="$(nvm version)"
  local nvmrc_path="$(nvm_find_nvmrc)"

  if [ -n "$nvmrc_path" ]; then
    local nvmrc_node_version=$(nvm version "$(cat "${nvmrc_path}")")

    if [ "$nvmrc_node_version" = "N/A" ]; then
      nvm install
    elif [ "$nvmrc_node_version" != "$node_version" ]; then
      nvm use
    fi
  elif [ "$node_version" != "$(nvm version default)" ]; then
    echo "Reverting to nvm default version"
    nvm use default
  fi
}
add-zsh-hook chpwd load-nvmrc
load-nvmrc

To default a specific node version: nvm alias default {version}

yarn - Fast, reliable, and secure dependency management.

brew install yarn

Act - Run Github Actions Locally

brew install nektos/tap/act

Git standup - Recall what you did on the last working day

brew install git-standup

Github CLI - Github on the command line

brew install github/gh/gh

Quick Look plugins

brew install --cask \
	qlcolorcode qlmarkdown qlprettypatch qlstephen \
	qlimagesize \
	quicklook-csv quicklook-json epubquicklook

Node packages to install globally

List all NPM package installed globally: npm list -g --depth 0

Netlify CLI - npm install netlify-cli -g
Gatsby CLI - npm install -g gatsby-cli
NPM-check - npm install -g npm-check
Yarn-check - npm install -g yarn-check
AWS Amplify CLI - npm install -g @aws-amplify/cli
Vercel CLI - npm i -g vercel
Create React App - npx create-react-app my-app
dotenv-cli - npm install -g dotenv-cli
Gitmoji - npm i -g gitmoji-cli
Release-it - npm install --global release-it
Plop - npm i -g plop

Applications

This is a complete list of all the applications I have on my personal and professional Mac (some apps are only on my personal computer).

🎁 Some applications can be bought individually or you can subscribe Setapp for a 7-day free trial to test multiple applications and decide the one you want to use!

Bare minimum

This is the list of the most essentials apps I would install if I was limited in the number of apps to have.

Little Snitch - Control incoming/outgoing network traffic

![Licence ~$30][licence-30] ![Usage high][usage-high] ![Upvote on Product Hunt][product-hunt]

What for? - What I ❤️ - What I 👎

What for?

Little Snitch is perfect to block outgoing or incoming connections.
When I'm on the go and using my mobile data, I usually block some heavy connections so I limit the amount of data spent.