This video is brought to you by TextSniper Hey, Iskren here, but feel free to call me E,
let's just dive into everything that I do when I setup a new Mac.
Fist things first, once the initial setup of the computer is done,
be sure to check for any operating system updates. In case of my M1, there was a new important update
that fixes issues when using external hubs. Next up is to enable tapping on the trackpad
which I still don't undestand why Apple would have it inactive by default - if you are an Apple
Watch user, I would highly recommend enabling the Apple Watch unlock. It may not seem like a
huge deal – just a way to conveniently unlock your Mac - but it's one of those things that
you will miss once you don't have access to it. In accessibility go to Zoom and be sure to enable
scroll gesture Zoom. I use this no stop. Point your mouse to the desired area o your screen,
hold Control and use the scroll to Zoom and enlarge whatever you are working for.
You eyes will thank you. Next, go to the Security and Privacy
settings under Firewall and make sure the firewall is enabled. Need to take your security seriously.
BTW, if you are enjoying this video, don't forget to thumbs up, subscribe to my channel and click
the bell icon button to get timely notifications. The next thing is setting up my iCloud. What I try
to do is emulate all my files and folders from the Cloud so they fit perfectly with my finder
workflow. This delivers the same experience as if those files are stored locally and I
don’t feel like I am downloading them. Then I put my projects and other folders
that I access frequently in the Finder's sidebar. If you want a more detailed guide on
how you can get the most out of iCloud, I have a dedicated video for you. Just click here:
At this point, as far as iCloud is concerned, all you need to do is wait (or keep working on
the next thing in the list). The service will take its sweet time especially if you have hundreds of
gigabytes of data. I am sort of a digital hoarder so I have over 1 terabyte of data on the cloud.
But you don't really need to be concerned about the storage space because macOS is pretty smart
about syncing – instead of dumping everything on your local storage, what it does is only downloads
the files that you access frequently. If the storage space on your M1 Mac is lower than your
Cloud data, that's not going to be a problem. Once I am done with setting up my iCloud,
my next focus is on organizing the dock and app drawer. It may not appear to be a big deal but
believe me, having an overall app organization is important for productivity. And if you're anything
like me, you will appreciate the clean look. So, first of all, remove all the apps from the
dock that you aren't using frequently. Also, I prefer to disable Show Recent applications
in the dock because I know exactly what I want to see at all times, no need for suggestions. Also,
since all displays these days are horizontally oriented, I prefer to not waste any vertical
real estate, so I move my dock to the left. Sometimes, I have it on auto hide, other times,
I keep it visible at all times. Meanwhile, if there are any default apps in the app drawer
that you don't use, move them to your junk or misc folder (a.k.a. Other) in the app drawer.
You are going to appreciate that extra space. If I am being honest, the app drawer isn't that
important to me as I use Alfred to fire up most of the apps that are not in the dock.
But I do like to have a visually aesthetic app drawer. That's just what I prefer. I do me,
you do you. They do them… and so on. Now let's move on to the next thing – which
is enabling stacks on my desktop and organizing my finder. If you open finder's preferences,
you will see New finder Window shows RECENTS but, to me, the most used folder is DOWNLOADS so this
is what it will be switched to. That means that I open a new window or tab in finder,
it will display my downloads folder which is what I look for 90% of the time.
In the sidebar settings, I hide everything except for iCloud, AirDrop,
Applications and Downloads... of course keeping all external locations visible as well. The
rest of my folders that I keep in the sidebar either come from iCloud or from the external
drive that I use as favorite shortcuts. Personally, I don't care about Pictures,
Music, Movies, and Recents –wow do I come across as the most boring person
on the planet… Anyway, you'd want to arrange your folders and favorites based on your own
workflow. Removing rarely used paths really brings out that minimalist aesthetic I love.
In finder, I enable SHOW PATH BAR and SHOW STATUS BAR. These may be trivial but for me,
those tidbits of information including path, file size, date, etc. are paramount. That's why I
prefer to enable them. Also, I keep all my views in list view with Preview enabled on the right
I also add a custom icon for my video projects location on the top of my finder window
for better visibility and accessibility. You can do that by pressing the command and
dragging the folder to the desired location. Another thing that I enable on my desktop
is in View Options. I organize my desktop files with label position on the right, sorted by Kind
and by Date Added. This gives me a chronological rundown of the files - just the way I want it
One pretty useful thing that I do – which I believe would be great for people who create
music or deal with audio files - is that I select to play audio files by default
in QuickTime. That's because if I am downloading some temporary project file effects or music,
I simply don't want that to end up in my Music app and mess up my music organization. If they do end
up in your Music, it'll take a lot of time for you to sort them out and move or delete them.
Talking about downloading audio files, I hate the default behaviours of Safari where it Safe Opens
all downloads right away...so do yourself a favor and disable this option from Safari's preferences.
By the way, feel free to check out my bi-weekly newsletter where I share behind scenes moments,
freebies, and links to products that you might find interesting.
Before we move to some apps, there's one more thing that I want to point out and that is of
course enabling Massages in iCloud. This will guarantee that your iPhone, iPad and Mac are on
the same page when it comes to iMessage. The last thing I do is transfer over
my collection of fonts that I have accumulated over the period of the
last decade - for instance, my channel font. Now it's time for installing Clean My Mac
X. You can use it to find and remove all the junk and scan activities that have been draining your
computer's resources. Or you can just stop using Google Chrome and switch to Safari...
just kidding. Or Am I? You can also use Clean My Mac X to uninstall applications in
a proper way so they don't leave anything behind. Next up is one of my new favorite apps and the
sponsor of this video TextSniper. I rarely get excited about apps,
but when a tool is that tremendously useful, yet unobtrusive, I have to spread the word. TextSniper
lives secretly in your menu bar and can be triggered by using the shortcut Cmd+Shift+2
which brings the cross-hair (sniper) cursor ready to take a screenshot of any text, image, video,
scanned document, pretty much anything that has text baked into it and it does that with great
accuracy. Once you make a snap, through some dark magic, TextSnipper preps that baked in text in
your clipboard, ready to be pasted anywhere. For example, take a photo of a book page, snap it with
TextSniper and paste the copy of the entire book page in your notes - amazing. This tool (which by
the costs only $7 lifetime purchase) can literally save you hours and days of work. It comes in 8
popular languages and it also has text-to-speach functionality which is great for people with
dyslexia or those who are visually impaired. The app works privately and no internet connection is
required. Plus, it's constantly updated, so do yourself a favor and Download TextSniper
using the first link in the description below. Now, I will just mention some other essential
apps that I always install on my new computer. And having in mind that this is an M1 at some point
during the apps installation you will trigger a Rosetta Stone setup, which is what Apple uses
to translate Intel based apps to run on M1. Rosetta works flawlessly in secret and once
installed you'll have hard time figure out which apps is not optimized for M1. The
installation of Rosetta is as difficult as pressing a single button. So, APPPS.
1Password - Duh! Nobody is managing all those passwords on their own, you need the app. LastPass
is also an option but 1Password has been great for me and I've been using it for years. I did give
Apple's keychain a chance and would've kept using it exclusively but it lacks a proper iOS app which
is not only a deal-breaker but kind of ironic. Then I install Alfred which does a number of
trivial tasks efficiently. I use it for launching apps, making calculations, accessing folders,
and keeping the clipboard history. I use Bartender to keep my menu bar
organized and clean. Another small app that I love is called displaputure which gives
the screen rounded corners so it makes my M1 Mac look more like an iPad Pro. Weird kink, I know.
Also, declare me guilty but I do use Google Chrome for a better YouTube watching experience and of
course Final Cut Pro for video editing and all the plugins. The only app I use from the Adobe
suite is Lightroom for retouching photos. For productivity, nothing beats Microsoft
Office - I also install Simple Notes for handy cross-platform note-taking with a word counter and
Notion for keeping track of my YouTube projects. When it comes to graphic work,
I am in love with all Affinity Apps - Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher.
Wanting to stay safe while being constantly plugged into the Internet,
I use NordVPN, which also gives me access to Disney+, because it's not available in my country.
Then there are small apps for daily tasks like VLC Player, PhotoBulk for batch editing images,
Rectangle for organizing and snapping windows (which by the way was referred to by a viewer
last time I did my favorite apps video), and Pocket for saving articles, videos,
and other content for later consumption. There's also a cool app called Theine.
I use it to keep my laptop active, not allowing it to fall asleep while recording something.
Of course, no setup goes without the giant flip screen saver clock,
which I'll link below. The site is full of rediculous ads, so be careful where you click.
Hey is my new favorite email client and service so that get's installed too.
If you'd like to learn more about how I use iCloud to run everything, make sure you check out this
video and if you have any questions, feel free to list them below or reach out to me on Twitter.
It's been an absolute pleasure sharing my setup with you. If you liked the video,
don't forget to leave a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel.
This is E Over and Out