💻 Shridhar's Mac setup

Dotfiles + brew bundle for setting up a fresh macOS machine.

Quick start

# 1. Install Homebrew if not already installed
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

# 2. Clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/sgup/new-mac-setup.git ~/.dotfiles
cd ~/.dotfiles

# 3. Sign into the Mac App Store via the GUI (`open -a "App Store"`).
#    Required for the `mas` entries in the Brewfile — Apple no longer
#    supports `mas signin` from the CLI.

# 4. Install everything from the Brewfile (formulae + casks + MAS apps)
brew bundle install

# 5. Symlink the dotfiles into $HOME (and Ghostty config into its app dir)
./install.sh

# 6. Apply macOS preference tweaks
./macos/defaults.sh

After that, open a fresh terminal — the new shell config + theme + tools light up immediately.

What's in here

File	Purpose
Brewfile	All formulae + casks installed via brew install. Restored with brew bundle install.
.zshrc	Zsh config: history, plugins, mise, atuin, fzf, eza aliases, helper functions.
.p10k.zsh	Powerlevel10k theme settings (generated by p10k configure).
.gitconfig	Git aliases, user info, delta as the diff pager.
ghostty/config	Ghostty terminal: font, theme, blur, keybindings, quick terminal, command-finish notifications.
macos/defaults.sh	macOS system preferences (defaults write).
install.sh	Symlinks every dotfile from this repo into the right home location.

Notable choices

Shell

• Powerlevel10k prompt with instant prompt enabled.
• mise for managing Node/Python (replaces nvm + pyenv).
• atuin for SQLite-backed shell history with fuzzy Ctrl+R.
• zoxide as cd (frecency-ranked).
• fzf with bat previews on Ctrl+T, eza --tree on Alt+C.
• zsh-history-substring-search — type a prefix, hit ↑/↓ to walk matching history.

Terminal

• Ghostty with JetBrains Mono Nerd Font.
• Quick terminal bound to Cmd+Shift+. (slide-down, system-wide).
• notify-on-command-finish bounces the dock when a >30s command finishes in an unfocused tab.
• Linear-corrected alpha blending + thickened fonts for crisp text on retina.

Git

• delta as the pager — side-by-side diffs with syntax highlighting.
• merge.conflictstyle = zdiff3 for clearer conflict markers.

Development tools

• bat (highlighted cat), eza (modern ls), fd (modern find), ripgrep (fast grep).
• gh for GitHub workflows.
• httpie, jq, glow, tlrc (tldr).

Mobile / backend

• cocoapods, ruby@3.3, watchman, xcodegen for React Native + iOS builds.
• flyctl for Fly.io deploys, libpq for psql/pg_dump, zulu@17 JDK for Android.

Apps (Mac App Store + casks)

• Security — 1Password.
• Productivity — Things (todo), Bear (notes), DaisyDisk (disk usage), Wipr (Safari content blocker), Dark Reader for Safari.
• Apple suite — Keynote, Numbers, Pages, iMovie, GarageBand, Final Cut Pro, Xcode.
• Communication — Signal, WhatsApp, Discord, Zoom, Mimestream (native Gmail client).
• Browsers — Helium (primary, Chromium privacy-focused), Google Chrome (backup, web dev).
• Editor + terminal — Zed (EDITOR/VISUAL), Ghostty (terminal — config in this repo).
• Dev — Docker, Figma, TablePlus (Postgres GUI).
• AI — ChatGPT, Claude desktop, Perplexity, Ollama (local LLMs).
• Media — Spotify, IINA (video player).
• Utilities — AppCleaner, Caffeine, Mac Mouse Fix, MonitorControl.
• Backup — Backblaze (sign in with your account to activate the subscription).
• Network / dev — Tailscale (mesh VPN), ngrok (local tunnel).

Manual installs (no Homebrew package)

• Linear — issue tracker. Download the macOS app from the website.
• Astro — App Store Optimization (ASO) tool. Download from the website.

Mobile / AI tooling (installed by install.sh, not Homebrew)

• Claude Code — Anthropic's native installer (~/.local/bin/claude). Sign in on first launch with claude.
• pnpm — standalone installer at $HOME/Library/pnpm (matches PNPM_HOME in .zshrc).
• EAS CLI — installed via npm i -g into mise's active node (so eas build/submit/update works in any fresh shell).
• Run npx expo-doctor inside any Expo app to check SDK/dependency drift.

Android setup (post-install)

After brew bundle install brings in Android Studio, open it once and let it download the SDK + a system image, then verify in .zshrc that ANDROID_HOME points at ~/Library/Android/sdk (it does by default). JAVA_HOME for the JDK is also pre-wired in .zshrc to the Zulu 17 cask install.

Brewfile philosophy

The Brewfile is curated, not auto-dumped. It captures the dev tools and apps needed for a productive day-one setup — not every CLI ever experimented with.

If you brew install something new and decide it earns a permanent spot, add it to the Brewfile by hand. Don't run brew bundle dump --force on this repo — it will re-add every transient tool currently installed and undo the curation.

To check what's installed locally but missing from the Brewfile:

brew bundle check --verbose                     # list anything missing
brew leaves | sort > /tmp/installed.txt         # explicitly-installed formulae
grep -oE '^brew "[^"]+"' Brewfile | sort > /tmp/in-brewfile.txt
diff /tmp/installed.txt /tmp/in-brewfile.txt    # what's drifted

Updating this repo

For dotfile edits, the symlinks created by install.sh mean changes to ~/.zshrc, ~/.gitconfig, ~/.p10k.zsh, and the Ghostty config already propagate to this repo automatically — just git add and commit.

If you didn't symlink, copy them in manually:

cd ~/.dotfiles
cp ~/.zshrc .zshrc
cp ~/.p10k.zsh .p10k.zsh
cp ~/.gitconfig .gitconfig
cp "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/config" ghostty/config
git add -A && git commit -m "Sync from $(hostname)" && git push