Essential configuration of OS X

Getting a comfortable environment

This page does not discuss favorite "essential" software but instead is a personal cheat sheet for configuring OS X to my liking. Your tastes may differ.

Make the dock smaller and turn on mouse-over magnification:
Set this from System Preferences > Dock.
Pick your favorite wallpaper.
Set this from System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver.
Disable other languages:

System Preferences > Language & Text > Languages > Edit List

On older systems, this is:

System Preferences > International > Languages > Edit List

Uncheck the languages you don't want (probably everything but English; you don't need U.S. English).

Enable Character Palette and Keyboard Viewer:

System Preferences > Language & Text > Input Sources

On older systems, this is:

System Preferences > International > Input Menu

I enable (check) Character Palette and Keyboard Viewer in case you need to search for a special character or need to remember how to type an æ, €, or accented characters from the keyboard. Select the Input Menu tab and check those items.

Remove unneeded languages:

Install and run monolingual to remove languages you don't need. You'll save a few gigabytes by doing this. Alternatively, you can also install and run xslimmer to accomplish the same thing.

Note that even if you did a fresh OS install and uncheck additional languages you'll still end up with several gigabytes of foreign language files.

Modifying application bundles, such as removing language files or stripping languages may cause problems with some Applications. In particular, avoid doing this for Photoshop and Microsoft Office. Unless you really need to reclaim disk space, I would avoid this. Read up on possible problems and tread carefully.

You'll also need to run this in the future after you install/upgrade software.

Remove unneeded input methods:
If you don't need to enter text in Korean, Kotoeri, both types of Chinese, Tamil, and Vietnamese then you can run monolingual to remove those input methods. You'll save a mere 53 MB.
Remove unneeded architectures: (or not!)

You can also run monolingual to remove architectures you don't need. You'll save another few gigabytes by doing this. As with languages, you'll also need to run this in the future after you install/upgrade software. Be sure you're running at least version 1.3.8 of the software since it stays away from the System directory. Stripping PPC architectures from the system Frameworks will cause problems with Rosetta. However, there have been reports that monolingual's stripping of symbols from executables causes problems with signed binaries, such as Mail.app. Check the latest blogs and comments on the web before proceeding. My experience is that Mail.app is the only application that is affected. If you want to do this, copy Mail.app to some safe place, such as the Desktop, run monolingual, and then copy it back.

If you're paranoid or just want to play it safe, just remove the languages and input methods but leave architectures alone.

Show all file extensions in the finder:

There are two reasons I set this. First, I don't need the mystery of hidden text in my file names. Second, OS X is forgiving if an extension is missing. For example, you can open a jpeg file even if it doesn't have a .jpg suffix. This will really confuse Microsoft Windows if you move the file to that system.

Enter the Finder (click on the leftmost icon in the dock or on the Macintosh HD icon). Then select Finder > Preferences > Advanced and check show all file extensions.

Set column view mode as the default in the finder:

I like the NeXT-derived column view mode for files & directories.

Go to the Finder and seelct View > Show View Options. Select Always open in column view.

Reduce the desktop icon size
I like my desktop icons a bit smaller, especially on smaller laptop screens (ditto for the dock). Right click (control click) anywhere on the screen and select Show View Options. I resized mine to 36x36 but that's just a personal preference. With the MacBook Air's touchpad, you can change the desktop icon size dynamically by pinching or unpinching the touchpad with the mouse focus on the display.
Show the remaining battery life in the menu bar
Click on the battery icon in the menu bar. Select Show > Time.
Name your machine
Go to System Preferences and select Sharing. The name entry box is on the top.
Enable root access

A lot of people recommend against enabling the root account, suggesting using the sudo command instead. I can't live without root access.

  1. Go to /Applications/Utilities.
  2. Run the Directory Utility (not Directory).
  3. Click on the lock on the bottom left corner and authenticate yourself.
  4. From the top menu, select Edit > Enable Root User.
Turn the Caps Lock key to a Control key

Nobody needs a Caps Lock key! Make it function like a Control key instead.

Open System Preferences, select Keyboard & MouseKeyboard. Click on the Modifier Keys button on the bottom-left in the window. Change the Caps Lock modifier to be ^ Control.

Enable the right mouse button

If you're using an Apple Mighty Mouse or any other two-button mouse, it makes no sense for the left and right buttons to be the same.

From System Preferences, select Keyboard & Mouse and then select Mouse. Notice that the right mouse button is labaled Primary Button, the same as the left mouse button. Select the right mouse button label and change it to say secondary Button.

Show the date and time on the top menu bar

Apple's time display doesn't show the date by default. There are several ways to get this. If you just want to see the time with the day and date displayed, you can go to System Preferences, select International, select Formats, and click on the Customize button in the Dates section. Select the elements (Day of Week, Month, etc.) to format the date as you'd like it to appear on the menu. Then select and copy (cmd-A, cmd-C) the date format. Hit OK and click on the Customize button in the Times section. Now paste the format from the Dates section (cmd-V). See these instructions at lifehacker.com.

If you'd like to see a calendar when you click on the date and have options to configure the display of the date and time, two programs that do the job are MagiCal and MenuCalendarClock. I've never used MagiCal so the instructions that follow are for MenuCalendarClock.

Download MenuCalendarClock from Objectpark software. Drag the program to Applications/Utilities. Run it (double-click on it). Now configure it:

  • click on the calendar icon on the top-right of the screen (on the menu bar) and then the gear icon under the calendar that pops up to get to Preferences.
  • I uncheck "show calendar week numbers" and check "show Sundays in red"
  • Under the Menu Item tab, I check "Show Clock" and select the following Custom Clock Format (the items before the colon are the number one followed by the uppercase i): 
    	%a %b %e %1I:%M %p
    This gives me a display in the format: 
    	Mon Feb 4 1:37 PM
    Set whatever you like. The program gives you some format choices or you can use the syntax of strftime to set your own format.
  • Hit Update and uncheck Show Calendar Icon. If it doesn't update, try toggling the left/right position buttons.
  • Have the program start when you log in: open Preferences, select Accounts, and select Login Items for your account. Drag MenuCalendarClock from the finder window into the login items window.
  • To keep the program's icon from showing up in the dock, select Hide Dock Icon by selecting Display Preferences > Display > Advanced.
  • Now go to System Preferences, select Date & Time, and uncheck "show date and time in menu bar". This disables Apple's clock display.
Add a Recent Documents stack to your dock
If you want a "recent documents" item in your dock, open the Terminal and run the following command (all one line): 
  defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'
Change "persistent-others" to "persistent-apps" to have a recent applications stack.
Change Mail's copy address behavior
Starting in OS X 10.6, Mail's Copy Address copied the name together with the address in angle brackets. To just copy the email address onto the clipboard, run this in Terminal: 
  defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool NO
Install onyx
Go to Titanium's Software and download Onyx. This is a useful utility for cleaning out caches and running maintenence scripts (particularly useful if you shut your machine off to keep scheduled jobs from running). There are other similar tools out there but this one is free and seems to be at least as good as the others.
Bring the shell to the dock:

I use the shell a lot. If you don't then this is useless to you.

Open the finder. Select Applications/Utilities. Click and drag Terminal.app (or just Terminal if you don't show all extensions) to the dock.

Have the terminal close when you exit the shell cleanly:
Launch Terminal. Select Terminal>Preferences>Settings>Shell. Select Close if the shell exited cleanly for When the shell exits:.
Create a .bash_profile
If you use a shell, you'll want a .bash_profile in your home directory. What you put in your profile is really up to you. Among other things, I stick in an 
 export BC_ENV_ARGS=-q
 PS1="\h|\W: "
The first keeps bc from printing a copyright notice. The second sets the prompt to the hostname|base_name_of_current_directory:. If you don't use bc (or the shell), then you won't care.
Install gcc and other useful tools

You can't survive without a compiler. Go to the Apple Developer Connection. If you're not a member, click on the join link and select the free ADC Online Membership.

Once you logged in, select Developer Tools and download Xcode 3.0 (you can also download other stuff, of course). Be patient. It's a long download.

*****

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh

Duis ultrices dolor sed erat.

Praesent ultrices, turpis vel feugiat tristique, mauris ligula pellentesque urna, quis interdum est enim mollis sem.

Ellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Praesent orci leo, suscipit vel, pretium eu, viverra at, eros. Morbi cursus.