Tuesday Tips | How to Setup Your M1 MacBook for Web Development

Today is January 26, 2021, and for this Tuesday Tips episode
we're covering How to Setup Your M1 MacBook for Web Development


Let's dive in!


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The worst part (or perhaps the most fun for some) of getting a
new laptop is setting up everything you need as a web developer.
Adding programs and tools that you had installed over the many
years of ownership of your previous laptop can seem daunting.
With the release of the new Macbook M1 laptops, there are some
interesting new considerations as well that you may not be aware
of. So, let's jump in and get the basics set up so you can hit
the ground running developing your next project.


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The first thing you should install is Rosetta 2, which allows you
to run Intel-based software on the new ARM chip. Because Apple
has created their own chips they needed a way to provide backward
compatibility with programs that do not yet support ARM and
Rosetta 2 is that solution.


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Homebrew will be the best way to add the other software and tools
on our computer, so we want to install that next. A quick tip
that is good to know is when you go to open the built-in Terminal
in the Applications folder: right-click, select Get Info, and
check the Open with Rosetta box.


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There are a lot of tools to consider when setting up your Macbook
from scratch, so one of the quickest ways to add a lot of the
important ones is to use a script. I recommend the script created
by the author of the original post that this is based on, but
feel free to use a different one or modify this one for yourself.


Opening the download script folder in your terminal you can
choose to run the install script or modify what will be installed
from the brew-installs.sh file. Once you're satisfied, run the
script.


Some of the tools and applications included in the script are:


MongoDB

node

git

zsh

Firefox

Chrome

VSCode

Zoom

Slack

Discord

Notion

and more...



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Something that is not included in the script is nvm because there
have been difficulties installing this with the ARM chip. To get
around this you will have to use a curl command and make a couple
of modifications afterward.


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Git was installed with the brew install script so make sure to
configure the settings and use a personal access token to
authenticate GitHub.


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Make sure to use the Settings Sync plugin to keep all of your
VSCode settings in sync with a stored GitHub gist.


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You should now be all set to start developing! Thanks to the
script many tools and applications were installed for us,
minimizing the manual install process.


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Today’s Tuesday Tips was adapted from a post on the Logrocket
blog.


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