This note covers essential settings and steps for reinstalling macOS. Follow the order carefully for best results.

<aside> 👌

Updated November 11, 2025 with macOS 26. Settings marked with 🔸 are highly customized based on my personal experience and not the default behavior. Feel free to skip these settings.

</aside>

1. Check info

   # Current version of MacOSX
   sw_vers -productVersion
   
   # Check if XCode Command Line Tools is installed
   xcode-select --install
   # Should return "/usr/bin/xcrun"
   # If there is any problem, try to install XCode from App Store!
   
   # check if running on ARM or Intel
   arch
   # arm64 -> ARM
   # i386 -> Intel (running with Rosetta)
   

2. System Settings → Keyboard

   • Input Sources: Should choose "U.S." instead of "U.S. International" because with the latter, we have underline score below special symbols like "
   • 🔸 Keyboard Shortcuts → Function Keys → Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys.
   • 🔸 Screenshot:
     • Switch the shortcuts between "Save picture of selected area as a file" and "Copy picture of selected area to the clipboard." I use "copy to clipboard" more frequently than "save as a file," so the simpler shortcut should be assigned to the "copy" action.
     • Uncheck "Save picture of screen…" (both options) to avoid accidentally saving the entire screen.

3. Change the screenshot save location: Open Screenshot.app and select your preferred save location.

4. System Settings → Trackpad

   • Point & Click
     • 🔸 Look up & data detectors → Tap with Three Fingers
     • Tap to click (tap with one finger)
   • Scroll & Zoom
     • 🔸 Turn off natural scrolling
   • More gestures

5. 🔸 System Settings → Mouse: turn off natural scrolling.

6. 🔸 Three fingers to drag (choose texts): System Preferences > Accessibility > Pointer Control > Trackpad Options... > Enable dragging (three fingers drag).

7. Download and install EVKey (I used to love it, but recent updates have made it laggy) or OpenKey, a Vietnamese input method.

8. System Settings → Menu Bar → hide icons

9. (Optional) Map top-left keyboard to backslash/tilde symbols. Install Karabiner-Elements and setting up "non_us_backslash" to "grave_accent_and_tilde (`)". If you don't know the names of some keys, you can use installed Karabiner Viewer.

10. Install AltTab HyperSwitch (and use ⌘ + ⇥ which replaces the default method on mac, be careful!!!) to switch between windows (instead of apps) like on Windows/Linux.

    • More settings of AltTab
    • Options for HyperSwitch

11. (Optional) For external keyboard K380: Download and install Logitech Options. Install this to use F keys by default. Remark: Don't open Bitwarden while using K380, otherwise, it won't work normally (for example, F keys).

12. Finder → Settings

    • Hide all items on desktop.
    • Default folder when new Finder window shows → “Downloads”
    • Sidebar: show more options
    • Advanced: Keep folder on top…
    • When performing a search → Search the curreng folder

13. Finder → View

    • Show status bar.
    • Show path bar.

14. Change the Date and Time format to 24-hour in System Settings.

15. Download, install and sync Google Drive.

16. Download and install Screenflick for screen recording on macOS (read more this note).

17. (Optional) Install Viettien (I use version 5.0b for Mac Big Sur chip M1). Alternative dictionaries can be downloaded from this link (I backed it up for personally using).

    1. Another option is to install Tinhte's dictionary from this link, copy extracted folder (Tinhe_anh-viet.dictionary) to /Users/thi/Library/Dictionaries/.
    2. After installing successfully, open Dictionary app > Preferences... > Tick on the names which are corresponding to the installed/copied dictionaries.
    3. There are built-in LacViet dictionaries but they are not activated yet, don't forget them!

18. Goldendict (a universal dictionary for macOS): download installation here + dictionaries here.