My Config

I have customised my Mac to make it enjoyable for keyboard-centric use, with one small monitor (or just the laptop), and I like to use free and open source software. Here is an overview of my configuration to date.

Key bindings

When I moved from Windows to Mac, I did not like the awkward positioning of the CTRL and CMD keys, and had thumb pain within weeks. I have since heavily rebound my keyboard and I have honed in on an efficient and comfortable layout for development, window management, and general use.

Main rebinds:

• CAPS LOCK → CMD if held, ESCAPE if alone

  • This is my favourite rebind. CMD is used all across macOS: opening and closing tabs, switching tabs by number, copying and pasting, and so on. This puts CMD right under my pinky, making the key fast and unmissable.
  • This keybinding is also extremely useful for quickly correcting mistakes while touch typing, because CMD+BACKSPACE to delete the previous word is near instantaneous, and deleting the entire previous mistyped word and retyping it is faster than trying to backspace the correct number of times.
  • I can hold CAPS LOCK and comfortably hit any other key with either hand.
  • I trigger CAPS LOCK with LEFT SHIFT + RIGHT SHIFT. This is a little awkward but I almost always hold shift instead.
  • This rebind also makes ESCAPE very accessible for leaving insert mode in vim.

• Swap CMD + ARROW KEYS with OPTION + ARROW KEYS

  • This makes hopping between words easy with CAPS LOCK + ARROWS.

• RETURN → CTRL if held, RETURN if alone

  • CTRL is used a lot in terminal programs on Mac.
  • This rebind is only comfortable when I am performing CTRL with my right hand and the rest of the combo with my left hand (e.g. CTRL+C/D); otherwise I use the normal CTRL key.

• CMD → HYPER 1 if held, CMD+SHIFT → HYPER 2

  • Both CMD keys are remapped to “HYPER 1”, which I use to switch between windows (e.g. HYPER 1 + 1 switches to workspace 1).
  • I move an application to a specific workspace with CMD+SHIFT (e.g. HYPER 2 + 7 moves the focussed app to workspace 7).

• CMD → ALT+TAB if pressed alone

  • For quickly switching between two workspaces.

Window management

Aerospace is a powerful, free and open source window manager for macOS. It is aimed at advanced, keyboard-centric users and is fully configurable with a dot-file (here’s mine). A few notes about my Aerospace config:

• I use dedicated, named workspaces for my most frequently used singleton applications. For example, my browser, ChatGPT, and Zotero are on dedicated workspaces.
• My projects live on numbered workspaces which I reconfigure frequently depending on what I am working on. I also use numbered workspaces for anything that does not have a dedicated workspace.

Great software

(All FOSS)

• Helium: an excellent Chromium fork.
• Ghostty: a Mac-first hardware-accelerated terminal emulator with optimal defaults.
• Zotero: for storing and annotating research documents.
• Neovim: build your own custom text editor.
• Zed: a Mac-first hardware-accelerated code editor with excellent defaults.
• Karabiner-Elements: for rebinding keys.

And Obsidian (not FOSS).

Great browser extensions

• uBlock Origin: the
• Google Scholar PDF Reader: the best PDF reader (but I store and annotate in Zotero).
• Quick Tab Switch: like Alt+Tab for Chrome tabs.
• Zotero Connector: save papers.
• DeArrow: remove clickbait from YouTube.
• Remove YouTube Shorts: DWISOTT.
• SponsorBlock: skip in-video YouTube ads.
• Unhook: minimalise the YouTube UI (disable recommended videos, comments).