How I set up new MacBooks
45 comments
·April 25, 2025sandreas
Jeff Geerling has a phenomenal ansible playbook to setup his macs:
pridkett
I moved all my setup to Ansible about five years ago. It’s been awesome, especially as it makes it trivial to replicate changes to new machines. Installed a new package? Run the playbook again. Changed a script? Run the playbook again.
Sure, there are edge cases I hit because I have some older machines, but for the most part, it’s awesome. I’m up and running on new Macs within a coffee break of getting terminal access.
nunez
This is the ideal version of the playbook I've been wanting to write for years to automate the chaotic dotfile collection I've written over the last 15 years!
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rcarmo
I have https://github.com/rcarmo/ground-init - which I also use for Macs, although via a bit of a hack right now. I should update it to a brewfile-like setup...
Anyway, my $0.02 is that doing fully automated installs on Macs is a fast track to having weird Finder and settings bugs (if not worse), so I mostly just install packages and very seldom (if ever) apply settings via the CLI -- I've had Apple break things across too many OS releases to find that a worthwhile long-term strategy, and most of the time I'd rather just use Migration Assistant (across Macs with equivalent OS versions) or configure settings manually for a new OS release.
Edit: just went and updated the above script to support brew/cask installs on macOS. Settings can go into the runcmd section.
joeyagreco
The best way to do it!
I have a file that sets my MacOS Defaults: https://github.com/joeyagreco/dotfiles/blob/main/.macos
And a file to remap some keys: https://github.com/joeyagreco/dotfiles/blob/main/.macos_key_...
And apply the remaps: https://github.com/joeyagreco/dotfiles/blob/b5b819c9bcde2e3a...
bombcar
I used to hand-setup each new Mac, but lately (last decade or so; gosh this M1 Pro is absolutely ancient) I just let the migration assistant do the needful.
Storage is too cheap for me to spend time optimizing it anymore. I’m sure I have cruft somewhere, but it doesn’t bother me.
ojhughes
> I just let the migration assistant do the needful
but will it revert back if things go wrong?
bombcar
It leaves the "source computer" alone, so if it blows up you can always just start again.
I never trade in my old computer, even if I'm going to sell or get rid of it (donate) I keep it around for a month or so to make sure everything's working.
phinnaeus
It reverts back and it does it at its earliest.
timothevs
Dear, this was gold.
cmpit
I get that. Personally, I'm a bit weird because I don't like to bring all the stuff from the previous machine (documents, files, etc.). I like to start fresh and only install a couple of apps / configure some settings.
broshtush
nix-darwin is a thing, and like all nix tools. It tackles this exact problem
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gbrindisi
I do this too. Nix is incredible, until it isn’t and then I regret using it so much.
I’ll probably use something dumber for the next machine, and keep nix for servers and local vms.
mcgrath_sh
I'm trying nix instead of Homebrew on my mac. It worked great until I decided to give rust a shot. I think my solution is to just do rust development on my Arch machine and stick with nix. That said, if I run into additional issues, I will probably just go back to Homebrew.
Where were your pain points?
phinnaeus
Highly recommend keeping Nix to your NixOS machines. IYKYK
moribvndvs
I use a setup script that installs brew, a brewfile, runs chezmoi to setup terminal and defaults, pulls some secrets/keys out of 1Password, and good to go, other than manually having to log into certain things. Everything in a personal dotfiles repo. I do have to occasionally diff my brewfile and terminal config and push that up, I should probably spend a little time figuring out how to automate that.
1inuxoid
I am also using this setup powered by chezmoi. It has brilliant secrets support and powerful templating allowing cross-platform setups. I do get lost in its state sometimes when updating `run_once_*` scripts and trying to make sure they still run. Another friction point is external tools installed via .chezmoiexternal.toml from GitHub.
nunez
same, more or less!
frizlab
I have an open-source script which installs all my conf https://github.com/Frizlab/frizlabs-conf
cmpit
Thanks for sharing it. Will deffo have a look and pick some stuff for my config.
corv
The missing magic incantation to create your Brewfile:
brew bundle dump
bitslayer
Ah ha! I had searched the article to see if there was a way to do that. Because while it would be awesome to have a file like this, creating it sounded like a pain.
bhouston
Thank you!
iorekz
sweeeet
kartikarti
Just in case anyone is lost in all the `defaults write ...`, I really recommend https://macos-defaults.com/
It's a really nice overview for (almost) all of the options.
When you search for "dotfiles" on GitHub, you'll find plenty of good script examples for setting up a new computer. Since Apple doesn't provide good documentation on what you can configure with "defaults" variables, these examples are a goldmine.