How To Setup Your MacBook For Maximum Developer Productivity | 2023

In this video, I'll show you my MacBook setup for maximum development productivity in 2023. I'll share my personal setup, including the essential apps and MacOS settings that will transform the way you work.
🚀 Next-Level Python Skillshare Class: skl.sh/3ZQkUEN
👷 Join the FREE Code Diagnosis Workshop to help you review code more effectively using my 3-Factor Diagnosis Framework: www.arjancodes.com/diagnosis
💻 ArjanCodes Blog: www.arjancodes.com/blog
🎓 Courses:
The Software Designer Mindset: www.arjancodes.com/mindset
The Software Designer Mindset Team Packages: www.arjancodes.com/sas
The Software Architect Mindset: Pre-register now! www.arjancodes.com/architect
Next Level Python: Become a Python Expert: www.arjancodes.com/next-level...
The 30-Day Design Challenge: www.arjancodes.com/30ddc
🛒 GEAR & RECOMMENDED BOOKS: kit.co/arjancodes.👍 If you enjoyed this content, give this video a like. If you want to watch more of my upcoming videos, consider subscribing to my channel!
💬 Discord: discord.arjan.codes
🐦Twitter: / arjancodes
🌍LinkedIn: / arjancodes
🕵Facebook: / arjancodes
📱Instagram: / arjancodes
♪ Tiktok: / arjancodes
👀 Code reviewers:
- Yoriz
- Ryan Laursen
- Dale Hagglund
🎥 Video edited by Mark Bacskai: / bacskaimark
🔖 Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:00 General productivity-specific tools
10:18 Developer-specific tools
15:41 BONUS: Finder settings
18:05 Outro
#arjancodes #softwaredesign #python
DISCLAIMER - The links in this description might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service through one of those links, I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you. Thanks for supporting my channel so I can continue to provide you with free content each week!

[@ArjanCodes]

👷 Join the FREE Code Diagnosis Workshop to help you review code more effectively using my 3-Factor Diagnosis Framework: www.arjancodes.com/diagnosis

[@rwz]

Never blur passwords, always completely remove/blackout!

[@TeemuSa]

Or use a collection of blurred versions of some friendly words to give the de-blurrers something to do...

[@japandi780]

Genuine question, can you really de-blur something that blurred? If so, how would this even be done? Is there like an algorithm to the blur pattern that can reverse or something?

[@rwz]

@@japandi780 you can get close approximations of possible characters which result in the blurred version and this way make better guesses, if not completely reverse it, at what the blurred text originally said.

[@japandi780]

@@rwz crazy, I didn’t think you could get anything from something so processed. I’ll bear this in mind if sharing anything with sensitive information.

[@japandi780]

Thank you so much. I’ve just reformatted my M1 to use it for Python programming and this was such a big help to create a nice blank yet productive base to work from.

[@jeffgruenbaum]

Thank you so much for this video. Some great suggestions!

[@davidbearden1592]

I can only attempt to express how thankful I am for this video! clear, concise, immediately actionable. you resolved a lot of minor annoyances, notably finder and added several tools to my productivity workflow. keep up the amazing content, and hope to continue to receive insightful knowledge such as this!

[@ArjanCodes]

Thank you so much David!

[@danienell5248]

really enjoy watching your videos, just got my mac today, and you know whos youtube I will be watching 😎

[@nithinseshadri1783]

Thank you, great video. Question, what MacOS version are you currently using? I'm using 13.4 and see that Homebrew doesn't have a pre-compiled package for some of the softwares that I am trying to install and would need to build from source. Is that how you went about this?

[@killaurnext]

rectangle is great! makes it more windows like!

[@pabloosorio6647]

This is really helpful! Thank you

[@ArjanCodes]

You're so welcome!

[@JohnDoeMediaGroup]

thank you!

[@Leofmoura87]

Raycast is pretty good to be added to your list. Thanks for the video

[@ericparnell9802]

Bravo! Thank you.

[@ArjanCodes]

Welcome!

[@mikechurvis9995]

I start a job on Monday and they'll be giving me a MacBook. You're right on time! Great video.

[@modoudiao9660]

Good luck for your new challenge

[@ArjanCodes]

Good luck!!

[@sunilyadav1983]

After a verylong time very useful video, thank you for making it. I could not understand how were you getting intellisence in terminal, could you point some resources for it?

[@mileta99]

Hi Arjan, this is nice video. But how do you solve docker issues on Apple Silicon?

[@wernerlippert5499]

Thank you for this video. Do you know how to install / compile prophet using pyenv or conda? (for python 3.11.2) Happy Easter!

[@szym1]

Last part was the most useful to me

[@leonardosrocharj]

Thanks for sharing!

[@ArjanCodes]

It's my pleasure! Thank you for the kind comment, Leonardo!

[@danineira2]

One question, do you recommend a MacBook air m3 16Gb to develop Apps with KMP? Is it enough to use Android Studio XCode with different emulators? Or it is worth jumping to the 18Gb macbook pro m3 pro. Thank you very much for your videos.

[@fnmby]

good video, thanks!

[@ArjanCodes]

Thank you!

[@appleweek]

The best starting video. 🙏🏽

[@ArjanCodes]

I'm happy to hear you enjoyed it :)

[@EmanuelRamneantu]

Very good video for people switching to mac. Thank you!

[@ArjanCodes]

I'm glad you enjoyed it, Emanuel!

[@peterlarsen4809]

Quick Question: Do the terminal upgrades consume a lot of system resources; I.e ram and storage?

[@jjc9003]

Could you provide details how you setup this window whci appears after you clicked shortcut in iTerm2?

[@nanayaw7159]

Great info

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks for watching!

[@ianduhamelhayes7956]

Love this video 😍

[@ArjanCodes]

Glad you enjoyed the content, Ian!

[@jlp2011]

For the terminal junkies among us, Time Warrior is a really nifty free time tracker(cross-platform?). Bit arcane at first, and reporting could be improved, but so lightweight to use 😊

[@aneeshyr]

Amongus

[@ReactiveBootcamp]

nice video!

[@redabitar]

Can I suggest something? I think it’s better to increase the scale of the display when you’re recording. Especially on mobile, it makes it much easier to see small text, and for example if the video quality is low it will still be clear :) Great video!!

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks for the tip!

[@bukjames]

Love this video. I was watching your recent video and wondering about the autocomplete, then this video came out! Amazing content as always.

[@CatDogDailyPosts]

Your keyboard sounds fantastic! What model is it?

[@wjrasmussen666]

I am an old CS person. Through the 80s - 2011 I was using Sun servers running Sun OS or Solaris. I am tired of using Microsoft. Seeing these new MacBook Pro M3 laptops, I am thinking of getting one. Love the command line. Any thoughts about switching? I want to have at least one other monitor at home perhaps two.

[@echoes6092]

I'm not sure if this was mentioned, but Emmett has an expansion where you type lorem# (# is some number) and it expands to that many words of lorem ipsum filler.

[@tommybrecher7742]

Thanks for this! I was actually asking about fig in your poetry video without realizing 😂

[@ArjanCodes]

Happy to help!

[@thesattary]

do you use Bash or zsh for shell?

[@Scorpisces1911]

is there any way to show terminal from top of screen in Windows OS?

[@michaellogan6154]

great viedo, any chance you could run through how you have set up some of the tools (specifically iTerm2)?

[@sherribooher7930]

Go to iTerm2's Settings, select Keys tab, then open the Hotkey panel. Click on the "Create a Dedicated Hotkey Window..." button to set up your hotkey profile and record the hotkey you wish to use. Hope this helps!

[@hasael2010]

your keyboard sounds awesome! haha

[@RejuuComputer]

How safe is Homebrew? Can it for example access my saved passwords?

[@UNgineering]

If you want to make key repeat rate even shorter, run this in terminal: defaults write -g KeyRepeat -int 1

[@JOHNSMITH-ve3rq]

Love it thanks dude

[@samsung40_media87]

Lots of overlap 😊 - Notion alternative - Quiver (free - but you can donate) - Maccy - Dittostack (paid) - Rectangle - BetterTouchTool (paid)

[@thatdumbguy2800]

Which keyboard are you using?

[@enriquejosuealvarezrobles8943]

Amazing content! I wonder if you could show us how you structure your SOPs. I am trying to incorporate SOP is my projects. Thanks a lot!

[@ArjanCodes]

Thanks for the suggestion!

[@philgsk]

What kind of lights are those on the wall?

[@idammi5060]

Can you share your notion notes. (Without your personal information of course)

[@yuangchen905]

great educational video. Can you please let me know, how to show the icon of folder when typing "cd" in your iterm2 as in your video? It is a special zsh theme?

[@yuangchen905]

OH, I find the icons after the installation of Fig. Thanks for your content.

[@blurby]

woah im a developer and right now i have minimal productivity, this is just what the doctor ordered

[@lonnythompson8131]

The default shell is zsh. Do you have to change to another shell such as "bash" to use brew? How to change shell? When using brew, what location should be used, for example installing perl5?

[@spell105]

Just give up on this whole developer thing if you can't figure this out.

[@lonnythompson8131]

Wow, your condescending comment was not expected. Your reply shows you might want to work on your anger issues.

[@kekevinfaithbilla9100]

Hello I need to divided my screen into four windows. Exists a method?

[@rima8583]

Thank you! Just one question, for iterm2, how to make the show/hide of transparent command line active even if we close the iterm2 app? It seems that it does not work if I don't have the iterm app open, and I don't want to keep the app open next to my open applications

[@catarinayikake4820]

It does seem like iTerm2 needs to be active to show the transparent terminal. I always have it open, but no windows, just shortcut keys so I can always use the terminal.

[@christianwooldridge406]

Paste is the clip board manager I use. It allows you to categorize your pastes e.g. common sh commands I really like it and it syncs between my iphone/ios devices

[@malte_berg]

What is the autocomplete thing called?

[@vaporeon2822]

Can I know how do you do the iTerm trick that makes iTerm sits at upper part of the window? Is it a separate window or a separate tab? Thank you!

[@JosiahPilon]

When in iTerm2 go to “keys” tab, then “hotkey”. Click create a dedicated hotkey window. There you go.

[@samanahsanizadeh7045]

Hey Arjan, Thanks to teach us so amazing helpful tips. I just want to say I wonder why don't you put more energy on your voice.

[@ThePaulWilliams]

Espanso is a free text replacement option - open source.

[@iamthezeo]

+1 for Espanso! Very powerful options, but does require a bit more work to set up. The config is in yaml, so you can keep all your shortcuts and replacements backed up, for example in GH.

[@JohnZappone]

what plugin or setting do you use for the folder completion in the terminal?

[@0x037]

It was "Fig"

[@red_cape.]

I like using vim a lot but it is hard to debug python applications in it. I hoped that you could provide some insight into that, maybe someday you will find the time to learn how to use it an give us your opinion. I say that because you're my default go to channel when we talk about python development. Keep up the great work Arjan !

[@alexbuccheri5635]

You probably want to integrate GDB into vim. Or my preferred option, go straight to the graphical debugger in Pycharm (and add vim key bindings)

[@khanra17]

Did you tried d2 instead of mermaid?

[@sanithumabarna]

Can you create a video about python metaclasses because it's difficult to understand

[@ArjanCodes]

Noted!

[@saxenavedant61]

Really great app recomendations 🙌

[@ArjanCodes]

Glad it was helpful!

[@sw1986chanell]

How did you set contro+option+space in item2 ? :)

[@minusteeseconds]

preferences>keys>hotkeys

[@wolfgangm7565]

I‘d really like to have sensible keyboard shortcuts in Finder. The default ones are most annoying, because nothing you‘d expect works: F2 for rename, enter to navigate to folder, delete to delete files,…

[@420_gunna]

Raycast replaces and improves on most of these tools

[@traderdaniel4749]

Is someone having problems with the shortcuts in maccy?

[@estebanmejia9989]

What kind of macbook do you recommend for web developers?

[@spell105]

Any will do lol; you don't need a powerful machine to write code.

[@LS-jv4uh]

Fig is a deadend. Currently not accepted new signups.

[@ErikS-]

5:03 - "Rectangle - a MacOS windows manager" Why on earth Apple doesn't include such functionality as standard in MacOS is beyond me. I honestly think it is one of the biggest painpoints of MacOS...

[@AstroStrongBox]

Microsoft has a patent I believe 😢

[@spell105]

Design philosophy mostly. macOS does have tools for window management but they are very different from how you'd do it in Windows.

[@patrickroza3073]

Nice, but the most productive of all is missing; raycast. Especially when you configure it for opening vs code projects and many many more

[@danielmmckeown]

@Patrick, where can I learn more about setting up Raycast to handle VS Code projects?

[@0x037]

How does raycast compare to Alfred?

[@alexbuccheri5635]

Development on Mac since the move to Apple Silicon has been considerably less convenient. No GDB or Valgrind, and goodbye to support for GCC < 12.

[@BerkayErmis]

🙌

[@lukaszbialczak2308]

Hey :)

[@kevon217]

Curious, how many people work on Arjan Codes team?

[@ArjanCodes]

Just a few, we are a small team :)

[@FredAndersonStillwater]

Love the video, but you need to pin a message about the status of Fig.

[@lazzaroni]

If you rename "Development" folder to "Developer" - some magic will happens ;)

[@jasond580]

haha yes! Was thinking same thing.

[@Whitify]

I would love a video on getting python under control. I feel like my environments and versions always get screwed up.

[@RaymondPeckIII]

pyenv with pyenv virtualenv is your friend. I detested working with virtual environments until this. It integrated perfectly with pycharm as well.

[@_kopiter_]

Maccy doesn't look as useful as alfred copy-paste history or the other popular similar tool

[@kmui6022]

hmm...good guide. just not for me. I am coding in Nvim using Tmux and want to curate my dev tooling from one repository. so I prefer to have control about my configs and plugins and tools and can set it up in 3 minutes by cloning my repo and run a script. It is way too much "mouse clicks" for me....

[@kmui6022]

I think what you are using it is not necessarily bound to Developer productivity but also managing and yt content creation.

[@spell105]

most of these tools just would slow me down tbh. less is more.

[@dmmeteo]

I prefer Spectacle instead of Rectangle. For me, it looks more friendly. For example, you can press the cmd+opt+left arrow a couple of times and it will resize your window for 50% > 25% > 75%. In Rectangle you must learn the special shortcuts for this behaviour.

[@michael_baron]

I thought Spectacle is not developed anymore and won't work on the M1 Macs. But maybe I"m wrong. I think Reactangle also allows you to cycle through widths.

[@dmmeteo]

@@michael_baron it works fine with M1. but I must check Rectangle again, maybe the current version become better than ~1 year ago. :)

[@cbacbacba09]

Rectangle can have this behavior as well. Spectacle isn't developed anymore, and Rectangle is the de facto replacement.

[@rrwoodyt]

I have a real love-hate relationship with Brew. It's great if you keep things updated, but does not play well with older machines and OS versions (e.g. production systems that the customer doesn't keep up to date). I know it's not the real focus of this channel, but it would be interesting for you to compare to working on Linux (latest Gnome is very nice) or Windows (probably WSL, maybe even goofy WSLg).

[@MrEo89]

The brew team is also sunsetting all support for every version that Apple doesn’t support anymore. Ali have a Mac running 10.15.7 Catalina and building everything from source has become a 9 hour pain in the ass. Looking at you .. node, rustc, and llvm.

[@rrwoodyt]

@@MrEo89 I feel your pain! We are in pretty much the same situation, and dread touching anything...

[@MilipTichaelPhomas]

we doing HSN videos these days, GetYourMoney I guess...

[@RajveerSingh-vf7pr]

Hey Arjan, "Free workshop" word is haunted because of the MLM and finance influencers, if it is not a scheme to enroll me for free and then try to milk me, you should really phrase your sentence differently,

[@spell105]

Bro, it literally is that. This dude can barely code his way out of a paper bag, cannot even use basic VSCode shortcuts and doesn't even use vim motions despite having vim emulation installed in VSCode. Dude's a hack.

[@1oglop1]

Most of features of Mac UI are outdated and clumsy Mac2023 == Linux 2008. I absolutely hate finder. Sadly driver issues on linux drove me away... I bough Mac M1 purely for it's battery life. I just wish I could use Gnome3 or other linux desktop on Mac to be more efficient.

[@abdeljalilyahya6361]

0

[@spell105]

Just learn how to actually use the environment effectively. There's nothing wrong with Finder, you're just incompetent.

[@jswlprtk]

By installing linux

[@gabbe319]

@@ThomasVanheldenit has a learning curve, long term you will save time

[@ThomasVanhelden]

@@gabbe319 Do you have your own business and use Linux on all your business/work machines?

[@dcngn_]

I love my customized Linux environment but tbh linux battery life sucks so much and sometimes I just want a machine that works flawlessly with screen sharing and connecting to bluetooth devices and everything when I have an important meeting.

[@mrx6555]

Why? You can do everything on mac too.

[@RichardMcRichard]

Yes I definitely want to spend 3 days in toxic forums trying to get wifi to work and dialing in the fractional scaling perfectly, only for all of it to break a month later after a kernel update. Been there, done that, bought the Macbook, everything works perfectly.

[@engine_man]

Docker, neovim… the end

[@klmcwhirter]

Dude. Drop the VIM extension. You really are not using it as far as I can tell. I love VIM in the right context. But VS Code has so many other features you are not using like F2 (rename) and CTRL-D multiple select, etc., etc., etc. I use vim exclusively when editing system level files in *NIX like systems like macOS, linux or raspianOS. But never in a programmers editor or IDE. Be good to yourself.

[@spell105]

Entry-level boomer programmer that cannot even use basic editor commands telling us about his 'productivity' set up is hilarious.

[@andrewazarov2717]

Aren't you sick of worshipping the cult of productivity?

[@firstname4337]

step 1: sell the MacBook step 2: buy a MS Windows machine

[@marzband]

step 3: At least with Ubuntu dual boot, windows is just awful for development

[@AloisMahdal]

step 2: buy a Framework machine with some Linux distro

[@psadi_]

I have a mac and a windows laptop for work and another mac and a Linux laptop for personal use. My heart is with Linux.

[@robbybobbyhobbies]

step3 block @firstname4337

[@0xZarathustra]

Didn't even know MacBook and Windows were still a thing

[@RocketLR]

I was suppose to get a computer refresh this week.. I was finally gonna get a m1 MacBook.. Then the boss denied my request and said "consultants only get HP laptops..". Im so angry that I have to downgrade and endure another frustrating 3 years of slow computers that can barely hold 10 browser tabs up... I would gladly buy my own m2 pro and have them configure it for their companies adoptions and what not. they could even keep the thing after im gone.. I just want a smooth work computer :/ haha this is like salt in the wound 🥲

[@ArjanCodes]

I'm sorry to read that!