Enable the right-click
To be able the right-click on the mouse
Lock the screen
On High Sierra
- Press the Cmd-Ctrl-q key combination to lock the screen.
On earlier MacOS versions
To be able to lock the screen from the menu bar:
- In Finder search for Keychain Access and start it,
- In the Keychain Access menu select Preferences,
- Check the Show keychain status in menu bar checkbox,
This will place a lock icon in the menu bar.
To lock your screen
- Click the lock icon in the menu bar
- Select Lock Screen
Show the full path in Finder
- Open Finder
- In the View menu select Show Path Bar
Finder will show the full path of the current folder at the bottom of the window.
To jump to a folder shown in the path bar just double click it.
Show hidden files and folders
- Open the terminal and execute the following line
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
- For the change to take effect relaunch Finder.
- Press the ‘Option/Alt’ key, right click on the Finder icon in the dock and click Relaunch
Show the battery charge percentage
- Click the battery icon in the toolbar
- Select Show Percentage
Apple Id without credit card
If you don’t have an Apple Id, create one. To obtain one without a credit card, you need to create the account in an older version of iTunes. In version 12.7 Apple removed the access to the App Store.
- Downgrade iTunes on your Mac to version 12.6. Follow the instructions at http://osxdaily.com/2017/09/17/downgrade-itunes-12-7-to-itunes-12-6/
- Start iTunes 12.6 on your Macintosh,
- Click the drop-down menu in the upper left corner,
- If Apps is visible, select it, otherwise click Edit Menu…
- Select Apps, and click Done to display it in the drop down.
- Select Apps, and click Done to display it in the drop down.
- Search for a free app in the App Store and start to download it,
- Create a new Apple Id and select None for credit card type.
Show the user home directory
- Open Finder
- In the Finder menu select Preferences
- Select the Sidebar tab
- In the Favorites section select the checkbox next to your user name
- In the Locations section select the name of the hard drive
Prevent Microsoft Outlook to send the message with Command-Enter
To prevent Outlook to send the email when you accidentally press Command-Enter, associate the Send action with a zero length character:
- Quit Microsoft Outlook
- Execute in the terminal
defaults write com.microsoft.Outlook NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add "Send" "\U200B"
Create a directory for optional applications
Create the opt folder in the root of the hard disk.
Memory usage monitor
- Download Dr. Cleaner Elite from the App Store to be able to monitor memory, CPU and network usage from the Menu Bar.
UTC Clock in the menu bar
BitBar is a plugin manager that can display plugins in the menu bar. One of them is World Clock that can display multiple clocks in a drop down of the menu.
Install BitBar
- Navigate to https://getbitbar.com/
- Click the Get BitBar button
- Click the downloaded ZIP file to extract the application
- Move the BitBar application to the Applications folder
- Launch BitBar form the Launcher
- The first time BitBar launches, opens the Finder to point to the BitBar plugins folder
- Click the New Folder button to create a folder for plugins in the Documents folder: BitBar Plugins
- Click the Use As Plugins Directory to select the new folder as the plugins folder
- The first time BitBar launches, opens the Finder to point to the BitBar plugins folder
Add World Clock to BitBar
- Navigate to https://getbitbar.com/plugins/Time/worldclock.1s.sh
- Click the + Add to BitBar button
Customize World Clock
To customize World Clock edit the worldclock.1s.sh file in the BitBar Plugins folder
To change the displayed timezones, edit the ZONES variable inthe file:
ZONES="US/Pacific UTC Europe/London Europe/Berlin Asia/Kolkata Asia/Tokyo Australia/Sydney"
To change the display format, edit the data formats.
- To remove the seconds from the menu bar, delete the :%S from the format line
date -u +'%H:%M UTC'
To add the day of the week and date to the clocks in the World Clock drop down
add
- %a for the day of the week
- %Y for the four digit year
- %b for the name of the month
- %d for the date
- %z for the time zone offset
echo "$(TZ=$zone date +'%H:%M - %a, %Y %b %d %z') $zone"
To refresh the dropdown formats after making changes in the config file
- Click the World Clock in the menu bar
- Select Preferences, Refresh all
Homebrew
Homebrew can install packages on your Macintosh that apple does not provide.
Installation instructions are at http://brew.sh/
To uninstall Homebrew execute
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/uninstall.sh)"
NPM
NPM is another package manager. Install it to be able to install other applications later on this page, including the SQL Command utility
brew install node
Remote Desktop Client
Download the Microsoft Remote Desktop app from the App Store
- Open the App Store
- Search for “microsoft remote desktop”
- Click the Microsoft Remote Desktop icon
- Click the blue Get button
- Click the green Install App button
Text Editor
Visual Studio Code
Atom
- Download it from https://atom.io/
- Double click the downloaded ZIP file to extract the application,
- Drag the Atom application into Applications
Configure Atom
See Atom text editor configuration
Terminal Window
iTerm2
Install iTerm2, a smart terminal emulator to issue Bash commands and log into Linux servers.
See Install and configure iTerm2
Git
JSON
To automatically pretty print JSON responses in Chrome
- Install the JSON Formatter Chrome extension by: callumlocke.co.uk from https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/json-formatter/bcjindcccaagfpapjjmafapmmgkkhgoa?hl=en
VirtualBox
For the VirtualBox installation on your operating system see: VirtualBox
Vagrant
For Vagrant installation see Vagrant.
Ruby
Ruby is already a part of the operating system.
Chef Development Kit
- Download the Chef Development Kit from https://downloads.chef.io/chef-dk/
Follow the instructions to install it.
Terraform by Hashicorp
- Create a version specific folder for the application. See Keep multiple versions of applications on Macintosh
Terraform Installation
- Open a terminal window
brew install terraform
Graphviz
Graphviz is a Dependency Graph Visualization Software. We will use this utility to display the Terraform graphs.
To install execute the following in the terminal
brew install graphviz
AWS CLI
The Amazon Web Services command line interface installation will set up your workstation to launch instances in AWS from Test Kitchen. If you know you will work with AWS, see DevOps Engineering part 3. – Working with AWS for the AWS CLI installation.
Vault CLI
Install the Vault CLI from https://www.vaultproject.io/downloads
Currently the command to install Vault is
sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/bin
brew tap hashicorp/tap
brew install hashicorp/tap/vault
Install JQ
brew install jq
SQL Command
To be able to execute Microsoft SQL commands from the command line or through Terraform, install the MS SQL utility
npm install -g sql-cli
Version information
mssql --version
More information on the tool is at https://www.npmjs.com/package/sql-cli
Packer
We use Packer to create custom AWS AMIs that contain the fundamental configuration and applications that are common in every instance we launch.
Install Packer
- Create a version specific folder for the application. See Keep multiple versions of applications on Macintosh
- Download and install the darwin_amd64 distribution of packer from https://www.packer.io/docs/installation.html
- For safe version updates, see Keep multiple versions of applications on Macintosh
- Add the Packer installation directory to the system path
Nice to have utilities
Spectacle
To easily organize your windows, (make them full screen, show two applications side-by-side, etc.), install Spectacle from https://www.spectacleapp.com/
- Download the ZIP file,
- Extract it, and move the Spectacle executable to the Applications folder
- Set it up for auto-start, see Set up an application to auto-start on macOS
diff-so-fancy
Smart diff visualizer that highlights the parts of the line that changed
- Install it
brew install diff-so-fancy - Configure Git to use it as the default diff tool
git config --global core.pager "diff-so-fancy | less --tabs=4 -RFX"
Disk Inventory X
This utility displays the graphical representation of file sizes and helps to find the biggest files.
- Download it from http://www.derlien.com/
Install the database management tools
Working with Windows servers from the Mac
If you want to work with Windows servers, you may need to run Windows applications on your workstation.
See Minimum Windows workstation setup to work with Windows servers
Next:
Set up the DevOps development environment in Beginner’s Guide to DevOps Engineering part 2.
Back:
to the Tutorials page