My 2021 New Mac Setup

I set up a new Mac for work today. Here’s everything I use on a Mac for fullstack web development.

Unlike Mina Markham, I choose not to automate my setup because I only do it about once a year and I want the ability to make conscious changes each time.

I previously tracked my new mac setup in an old version of this page from 2018-2020.

1hr Video Walkthrough


OS/Browser Settings

Setup Terminal

Set up apps/environments

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

    i have a bunch more stuff in brew list but i’m not sure what i use actively. You can mass install these: brew install $(cat packages.txt)

    bat             gdbm            libuv           python@3.9
    brotli          gh              libyaml         readline
    c-ares          go              mpdecimal       ruby
    deno            gradle          notunes         sqlite
    diff-so-fancy   icu4c           node            xz
    fnm             jemalloc        openjdk         yarn
    fzf             libev           openssl@1.1     z
  • new: added brew install --cask notunes, replaced nghttp2 above

  • brew update on m1’s have turned out to be super annoying. this helped me: arch -x86_64 brew install YOUR_PACKAGE

  • brew install bat

  • Github CLI: brew install github/gh/gh

    • you need to login to git - if you have 2fa enabled, you cant use your normal github password. try pushing to a repo and enter in a Personal Access Token for password.
    • then run gh auth login
    • add GitHub SSH key (not optional)
  • brew install fzf - fuzzy finder - usage example is here

  • brew install node

    • Node.js/NPM
    • npm login
    • npm config set loglevel
    • sudo npm install netlify-cli -g
    • npm i -g sign-bunny fortune-node parrotsay
    • npm install -g undollar for removing $
    • sudo npm install -g trash-cli
  • brew install yarn --ignore-dependencies - yarn note

  • you may need to work around Mac OS Sierra

  • brew install z - REALLY GOOD TRY IT

  • Misc

Setup Apps


Other good “new laptop setup” lists:

Tagged in: #mac #tech

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