What tweaks do you use in your Macintosh? | Hacker News Reader

What tweaks do you use in your Macintosh?

5 pointsredxblood17 comments

Do you have any tips/tweaks/hacks you use in your Mac? Software or hardware alike.

• Change the Trackpad plists to allow both two-finger tap, and bottom-right click. Apple took away the option to set this from the GUI in Lion, for some reason.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/105705/50905

• Add "System Files" and "File Visibility" to the list of Spotlight options

• Install "EasyFind.app" so I'm not at the mercy of my Spotlight db (as useful as Spotlight can sometimes be)

• Install Services like "WordService for Mac" to alphabetize text, or convert text encodings

• Install my own services to do things like "chmod +x" or "copy file contents as base64" or "copy path to this file as text" (I'd die without this) from the GUI

• Set "System Preferences > Keyboard" to "All controls" to uncripple key commands

• Install "KeyRemap4MacBook" and enable Fn+J/K/L/I as cursor keys

• Install "Display Rotation Menu" menulet to switch between portrait/landscape

• Install "SizeUp" to move/resize windows

• Change the Finder setting to allow text selection in Quick Look previews:

"defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection -bool TRUE"

• create a softlink to my "~/Library/" named "~/Library /" (or alternately just chflags nohidden)

Right now there's a few essentials for my Air:

- PCKeyboardHack https://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/pckeyboardhack.html... to map CapsLock to Escape

- KeyRemap4MacBook https://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/ to map Fn to Ctrl

- Spectacle http://spectacleapp.com/ to resize windows with the keyboard

- Caffeine http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/ to easily toggle the screen's sleep setting

- The Unarchiver http://unarchiver.c3.cx/unarchiver handles tons of file formats

f.lux http://justgetflux.com/

As much a brain hack as a Mac hack. #1 recommendation.

I second f.lux as I've been using it for a few years. Just try it for a while.

When I install a new system, I always go through these steps in no particular order:

* change the appearance and the contrast color from "blue" to "graphite"

* disable the zoom effect and enable automatic hiding of the dock

* limit Spotlight's scope

* increase the speed of the mouse

* install Perian

* install Secrets

* install Slate

* install ClipMenu

* install QuickSilver

* install QuickCursor

* install MacPorts (and the required XCode)

* install Subversion, Git and Mercurial

* install a bunch of CLI utilities like cdargs or tmux

* install MacVim and clone my config

I would love something like QuickCursor... How did you install QuickCursor? (builds won't launch due to the OS X Sandbox?)

If you don't mind downloading binaries from total strangers, this is the one I'm using right now:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z9lhundywuz7llg/QuickCursor.app.zi...

I'd recommend http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/ (the easiest way to run windows app on mac) The first time I installed it was because I couldn't find a tool like total commander (http://www.ghisler.com/) for mac, so I will add that to my list total commander :D

The rest really depends on what you will do with it.

Fullscreen tmux with all development in linux VMs. I don't even know why I'm using a Mac anymore.

F.lux and an email client that works.

My required installs:

* f.lux * Divvy (resize windows on the fly) * TotalTerminal (a visor-style thing for using the terminal) * Alfred 2 (a Spotlight replacement - I used to use Quicksilver, but it's no longer actively developed)

Quicksilver is back under development - the latest version is 1.1.2, and the last commit at their repo[1] was five days ago... Not on fire, but there is stuff happening.

Also, you may like Moom[2] for window management - sucky name, but the feature set makes up for it ;)

[1]: https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver/ [2]: http://manytricks.com/moom/

I have a MBPR. - I used QuickRes2 to switch to a much higher resolution 1920x1680 which is not possible otherwise. - Wrote a script to download the beautiful bing.com backgrounds for use as wallpapers

Care to share the script?

#!/usr/bin/env bash

PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin PICTURE_DIR="/path/to/your/directory"

#mkdir -p $PICTURE_DIR

cd $PICTURE_DIR

urls=( $(curl -s http://www.bing.com|grep -Eo "url:'.?'"|sed -e "s/url:'$[^']$'./http:\/\/bing.com\1/"|sed -e "s/\\\//g") )

for p in ${urls[@]}; do filename=$(echo $p|sed -e "s/.\/$.*$/\1/") if [ ! -f $PICTURE_DIR/$filename ]; then echo "Downloading: $filename ..." #wget -q -O $PICTURE_DIR/$filename $p curl -Lo "$PICTURE_DIR/$filename" $p else echo "Skipping: $filename ..." fi done

Install:

* Homebrew

* Caffeine and NoSleep

* SetResX for Retina displays (lets you deretinafy and use native resolution)

* KeyRemap4MacBook to swap () and [] (but I might be weird)

* iTerm2

you can find some tips and tricks on Apple Stackexchange: http://apple.stackexchange.com/q/400/24026

If I could recommend just one, it would be 1Password.

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