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Mac OS X Setup Guide

System Preferences

First thing you need to do, on any OS actually, is update the system! For that: Apple menu () > About This Mac > Software Update.

Also upgrade your OS in case you want to work on the latest OS. Sierra is a free upgrade so please check that.

If this is a new computer, there are a couple tweaks you would like to make to the System Preferences. Feel free to follow these, or to ignore them, depending on your personal preferences.

Users & Groups

  • Login Options -> Change fast switching user menu to Icon
  • Set up Password, Apple ID, Picture, etc.

Trackpad

  • Point & Click
    • Enable Tap to click with one finger
    • Change Secondary click to right corner
    • Uncheck three finger drag
  • Scroll & Zoom
    • Uncheck all apart from Zoom in and out

Dock

  • Visual settings
    • Change position to left and make the size of Icons small

  • Other settings

    • Remove workspace auto-switching

        $ defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool NO
  $ killall Dock

Finder

  • Toolbar
    • Update to add path, new folder and delete
  • Sidebar
    • Add home and code directory
    • Remove shared and tags
    • New finder window to open in the home directory
  • Remove the display and Bluetooth icons
  • Change battery to show percentage symbols

Spotlight

  • Uncheck fonts, images, files etc.
  • Uncheck the keyboard shortcuts as we'll be replacing them with Alfred.

Accounts

  • Add an iCloud account and sync Calendar, Find my mac, Contacts etc.

Write to NTFS on OSX Yosemite and El Capitan

Install Homebrew and Homebrew Cask

  • Instructions here!

Update Homebrew formulae:

$ brew update

Install osxfuse

Install ntfs-3g

$ brew install homebrew/fuse/ntfs-3g

If you are on OSX 10.11 (El Capitan), temporary disable System Integrity Protection.

  • reboot and hold CMD+R to get in recovery mode
  • Open the terminal and type
$ csrutil disable
  • reboot normally
$ sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs.original
$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs

If you are on OSX 10.11 (El Capitan), re-enable System Integrity Protection.

  • reboot and hold CMD+R to get in recovery mode
  • Open the terminal and type
$ csrutil enable
  • reboot normally