Let’s say you need to reinstall your Mac from scratch after you broke its firmware and failed to revive it using Apple’s own method. Of course, this is a fictional example and not something I’ve had to do twice this week. I’m a bit miffed you’d think otherwise. Anyway. Were this to happen to you, and you’d ask me to help reinstall your Mac exactly how I’d do it for myself, here’s my how-to guide.

Sign in to your iCloud account and turn on the Desktop & Documents folders syncing feature. Despite my reservations, and there are many, there’s something to say about the ease of restoring pretty much everything you need on a daily basis at the push of a single button. At the end of the installation wizard, you’ll need to launch System Settings to turn off Optimize Mac Storage in the iCloud > Drive section. All your files will be downloaded locally, and you’ll be able to back them up with Time Machine.

Sign in to the App Store. It’ll be important for later.

Run my MacInstall script to change a few defaults. More people should use hot corners and nobody should be forced to use the Finder without the path bar. I’m too lazy to figure out why Safari’s commands stopped working. You’ll want to turn off Open ‘safe’ files after downloading in the General tab and turn on Show full website address and Show features for web developers in the Advanced tab.

The script will install Rosetta and Homebrew, which will, in turn, install the command line tools. A few apps will be installed with Homebrew Cask:

• Audacity, which you might want to use for light audio editing;
• BBEdit, the only IDE that doesn’t suck;
• Firefox, even though you’ll use Safari for most of your daily browsing;
• Tower, which might be the best Git client for macOS.

The MAS command-line interface will then be used to download most of your apps from the App Store:

• Flow, a simple Pomodoro timer;
• GoodLinks, a great read-it-later app;
• Home Assistant, the ultimate home automation solution;
• iA Writer, which gets worse with every ‘update’;
• Keynote, because who’d want to use PowerPoint;
• Numbers, because who’d want to use Excel;
• Pages, because who’d want to use Word;
• Photomator, a photo-editing app so good that Apple bought it;
• Reeder, an excellent RSS reader that transformed into an intriguing timeline app;
• Sleeve, a cool little controller for Apple Music and scrobbler for Last.fm;
• TestFlight, to install the Bloom app that’ll hopefully launch soon;
• Ulysses, a slow and infuriating app you couldn’t write books without;
• WaterMinder, because you’ve got the bad habit of not drinking enough water and ending up in the hospital because of it.

It will also install a few Safari extensions:

• 1Blocker, the web is better without ads and trackers;
• Kagi, search is better without ads and trackers;
• StopTheMadness Pro, the web really is better without ads and trackers.

You’ll need to install your faithful Antidote manually, some things never change.

If you want to type in multiple languages with a single keyboard, you’ll want to install my QWeuRTY keyboard layout. If you’re feeling nostalgic, you’ll want to download the Aqueux wallpapers — I use the Monterey one. With that, you’re all set!