computer-setup

Computer Setup

Steps and software for setting up a new Mac.

Apps

Productivity

• Flycut — clipboard manager with history. Access previous clipboard entries via a configurable shortcut (default: Cmd+Shift+V).

• Rectangle / Rectangle Pro — window management via keyboard shortcuts. Move and resize windows to halves, thirds, corners, and fullscreen without touching the mouse.

  Rectangle Pro Setup

  One thing I like to configure is cycling between window sizes on a single shortcut. For example, pressing Ctrl+Cmd+← cycles the focused window through 1/2, 2/3, and 1/3 of the screen width on the left side — tap it repeatedly to step through sizes without lifting your hands.

  

  Rectangle Pro supports this natively via its cycle actions. You can also set up custom window dimensions beyond the built-in presets — this blog post is where I discovered how to do that.

• RCMD — app switcher using the right Cmd key + a letter to jump directly to any running app. Much faster than Spotlight (Cmd+Space) which requires typing the app name and doesn't have dedicated key mappings.

• OpenSuperWhisper — voice-to-text app. In my experience, far superior to macOS's built-in dictation.

  brew install opensuperwhisper
  

  After installing, open the app's settings and manually select the microphone you want to use — it doesn't default to the system input.

  Also pick which model you want to use, and set an initial prompt describing your preferred output format. By default, OpenSuperWhisper spells out numerals in full (e.g. "one" instead of "1") — an initial prompt with numerals already in it steers it toward writing numbers the way you actually want. The one I use:

  Quick notes from today: standup is at 9:30, and I need to send 3 replies before 5:00. We shipped v2.4 to 128 users, the error rate dropped to 0.5%, and I closed 47 of 52 tickets. Budget is $1,200 through Q3 2025. Reach me at 555-0142 - I'm 2nd on the list.

  Recording Cleanup

  OpenSuperWhisper keeps every recording indefinitely in ~/Library/Application Support/ru.starmel.OpenSuperWhisper/recordings/ — there's no built-in retention setting yet. This is already fixed upstream (PR #172, merged 2026-07-06, closes #164) with a built-in auto-delete-after-X-days preference — it just hasn't shipped in a tagged release yet (latest release is still 0.1.0 from 2026-03-03). Once that release ships and you upgrade via brew upgrade --cask opensuperwhisper, this cron job can be removed.

  Until then, opensuperwhisper-cleanup.sh deletes recordings older than 4 days. Set it up as a daily cron job:

  crontab -e
  

  0 14 * * * /Users/william/Desktop/github/dotfiles/computer-setup/opensuperwhisper-cleanup.sh >> /tmp/opensuperwhisper-cleanup.log 2>&1
  

  Requires Full Disk Access. cron is blocked by macOS from touching ~/Library/Application Support/... by default — the job will silently fail with Operation not permitted in the log until you grant it access: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access → add /usr/sbin/cron (press Cmd+Shift+G in the file picker to type the path directly).

macOS System Settings

• Keyboard repeat rate — set to fastest repeat, shortest delay (System Settings > Keyboard).
• Trackpad — enable Tap to Click, increase tracking speed.
• Dock — auto-hide, remove unused apps.
• Spotlight — useful for quick app launches but slower than RCMD and lacks direct key mappings.