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Tips: macos

Tips: macos

I’ve been using OSX/macos as a daily driver workstation/notebook device1 for many years, originally because it was a unixlike OS that worked well [enough] on good [enough] hardware with good support for that hardware2.

System

  • Homebrew makes macos acceptable. (I also use many machines with Homebrew on linux)
  • See my article about my macos configuration management
  • Adjust VRAM Allocation on Apple Silicon Macs (verified on Sequoia/Tahoe): sudo sysctl iogpu.wired_limit_mb=(size in MB). (This could help LLama and gaming, but comes with stability risks).

Keyboard-driven life

  • Vimium (Extension/Add-on) for browsers based on Chrome and Firefox.
  • One of the tiling window manager projects: glide?

Version Specific

MacOS 26 (Tahoe)

  • Liquid Glass: System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Reduce Transparency to ON
  • Animation: System Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Reduce Motion to ON

Networking

  1. After modifying /etc/hosts, flush the DNS cache:

    $ sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

  2. neo-network-utility

    The OSX Network Utility has been missing since Catalina, neo-network-utility is pretty similar for Sequoia/Tahoe.

    $ brew install neo-network-utility

Virtualization

  • vz, lima, colima

Other

  • LM Studio

  1. I also use linux machines as daily drivers. Yes, I’m a nerd who has several different machines that I use daily - who is surprised? ↩︎

  2. Unfortunately for me, nowadays (and for many years) AAPL seems pretty keen on making changes that I don’t care about or even actively de-prefer. But inertia/lock-in and spoon allocation are keeping me on macos. ↩︎

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