macOS set up

This post documents the very basic set up I have made with a brand new account in macOS. By no means this list is comprehensive and it also reflects my personal preferences.

System set up

• System Preferences -> Trackpad -> Tap to click: I like to be able to click with a tap.
• System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Pointer Control -> Trachpad options -> check Enable dragging then select three finger drag: I like to be able to move an application or select text with three fingers.
• System Preferences -> Dock & Menu Bar -> check Automatically hide and show the Dock: The space is already limited on a laptop so I want to hide the dock (on the left side for me).
  • I also removed lots of build-in App from the dock: click with two fingers, then Options, then Remove from Dcok.

Install Apps

1. Homebrew is the first program to install! Now most other Apps will be installed with brew. With the code below, it is easy to switch computers later (if without TimeMachine).
2. brew install --cask alfred to install Alfred: to quickly lanch Apps (and more).
   • Use Alt + Space then type the App you want to open, then press enter or move down to the one you want to open and then press enter.
3. brew install --cask iterm2 to install iTerm2: a better option than Apple’s Terminal app.
   • Cmd + , to open preferences, Profiles -> Colors –> set Background color to 300a24 (I like the Ubuntu terminal background color).
4. brew tap homebrew/cask-fonts then brew install --cask font-iosevka to install the Iosevka font, which I really like to be my coding font.
   • back to iTerm2 and set Iosevka as the font Profiles -> text
5. brew install --cask r to install R.
6. brew install --cask rstudio to install RStudio
   • I also set the font to be Iosevka: Cmd + , -> Apperance -> Editor font and select Iosevka-Term.
   • Cmd + , -> in the General and Basic, select Save workspace to .RData on exit to be never. I think this is a good choice for the sake of reproducibility; we should just save the important results separately instead of the whole workspace.
   • Open Alfred, then Cmd + ,, in the Features panel and the Default Results, select Advanced, then drag and drop an RStudio project file to here. This will allow Alfred to search all RStudio projects later, which is very handy.
   • Install R package usethis with install.packages("usethis"); after then, in RStudio, run usethis::edit_r_environ(); in the opened file, add R_LIBS_USER="~/R". This will make sure all R packages later will be installed in one folder no matter which version of R you use. The default behavior of R will install packages in different folders (with version number) when you use different versions of R (i.e., update R to a new version and then packages will be installed in another folder named as something like this /Library/Framework/R.framework/Version/4.1/Resources/library [Default])
   • In Terminal, run mkdir ~/R to create the folder to host R packages.