MacBook Tweaks

Got a new MacBook for work about two weeks ago (macOS High Sierra, 15 inch screen, 16 GB memory). I’ve been a Windows guy most of my life, so it’s been a fun switch. As I was settling in, here are a few tweaks I made so things would feel more homey.

I didn’t like how minimized apps took up additional space in the dock, so I set them to minimze into the app icon.

System Preferences > Dock > check Minimize windows into application icon

I like the default black background and white text in Windows Command Prompt, so I changed Terminal accordingly.

Terminal > Preferences > Profiles tab > set Pro as default, change font to 12 pt, change background color opacity to 100%

I like to keep my desktop tidy, so I changed the default screenshot save location to a folder in my home.

mkdir -p ~/Screenshots
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Screenshots

When clicking maximize on a window, you’d expect it to, well, maximize, but instead it goes full screen. After some googling I learned option + shift + maximize button would maximize windows while still keeping the menu bar visible.

Then a friend told me about Spectacle. This tool allowed me to “pin” windows to the right or left of my screen like I could in Windows, as well as center, maximize (as intended), and more.