After learning about nix and it's philosophy I became curious about using it. I soon learned about Nix Darwin and how I could use Nix, Nix Packages a Nix Darwin to get a declarative setup on my mac. This configuration is what I use on my personal machine every day. It was a pain to learn but once I did, it has been a joy to use. If you are intrigued by Nix on Mac this is good place to start. Browse through the readme to learn a thing or two. While I recommend you create your own configuration as that is the best way to learn, you can certainly use mine, just know this configuration is meant to work with my system and hardware not be a general purpose configuration for mac so you may run into issues.
This configuration is meant for a Macbook Pro M2 running macOS Sonoma 14.6 and should be installed on a clean system. You will need to use the terminal to run the commands provided.
I originally was hoping I was going to be able to configure a system that didn't need Xcode clit tools however with the inclusion of Homebrew, this has to be included.
xcode-select --installI use homebrew to install gui applications, as using nixpkgs for them isn't the best right now for macOS.
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"Enable rosettta 2 to run apps that haven't been ported to work with apple silicon like cold turkey blocker
sudo softwareupdate --install-rosetta Installing nix used to be a real pain, uninstalling was even worse. Determinate Systems has made this process seemless. As such we will be using the Determinate Systems Nix Installer to install Nix. When you run the installer make sure to say no when it asks you if you want to install Determinate Nix which is Determinate's downstream Nix distribution you say no. This leads to problems later on with Nix Darwin that we want to avoid.
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf -L https://install.determinate.systems/nix | \
sh -s -- installAt this point you should have access to git on your system, which was installed when you installed Xcode cli tools. If you want to use this repository clone the repo. Make sure you keep note of where you cloned the repo it will be important later
git clone https://github.com/aashish2057/nix-config.gitThe 2 concepts that change depending on what sytem you are using are the users and the hosts. The users are located in the users folder and the hosts are located in the hosts folder. You will have to make your own entries into those and import them into the flake.nix file. Look at how users/aashishsharma.nix, and hosts/aashish-sharma-macbook-pro.nix are imported into the flake.nix file. In order to get your sytsem username and hostname you can run the following commands in your terminal.
whoami # get username
scutil --get LocalHostName # get hostnameLastly, remember when I told you to keep track of where you cloned the repo. Now make sure this path to your repo is correct. The repo is setup as if you cloned the repository in /Desktop.
# home/core.nix
source = config.lib.file.mkOutOfStoreSymlink "${config.home.homeDirectory}/Dev/nix-config/dotfiles/ghostty"; # line 38
source = config.lib.file.mkOutOfStoreSymlink "${config.home.homeDirectory}/Dev/nix-config/dotfiles/nvim"; # line 41
source = config.lib.file.mkOutOfStoreSymlink "${config.home.homeDirectory}/Dev/nix-config/dotfiles/aerospace"; # line 44This allows you to access your configuration in neovim regardless of where you opened neovim. This makes it easy to make quit edits to your configuration.
-- dotfiles/nvim/lua/config/core/keymaps
cwd = vim.fn.expand("~/Dev/nix-config"),Now you are ready to install Nix Darwin. At this point be sure that you want to proceed this could override your mac settings, program settings etc.
Disable nix.conf installed by Determinate Systems, doing so will disable experimental features like nix-command and flakes. We do this as Nix Darwin will be creating a new nix.conf based on the configuration in the repo.
sudo mv /etc/nix/nix.conf /etc/nix/nix.conf.before-nix-darwinRun this command from the directory containing your flake.nix file. This will install any inputs such as Nix Darwin from the flake and a build the system based on your configuration.
nix run nix-darwin --extra-experimental-features "nix-command flakes" -- switch --flake .Now that you have install Nix Darwin you can just use the command below anytime you want to rebuild your system after making changes to your flakes.
darwin-rebuild switch --flake .Custom shortcuts for Arc Browser
archive tab - ctrl - w
find - ctrl - f
go back - ctrl + shift - left
go forward - ctrl + shift - right
new tab - ctrl - t
new window - ctrl - n
next space - ctrl + cmd - right
prev space - ctrl + cmd - left
next tab - ctrl + cmd - up
next tab - ctrl + cmd - down
open command bar - ctrl + shift - l
refresh the page - ctrl + r
restore last closed tab - ctrl + shift - t
show/hide sidebar - ctrl - s
- settings > screensaver > select the one with the highways/traffic
- Go > Computer > macHD > Library > application support > com .apple.idleassetsd > Customer > 4KSDR240FPS
- delete 35693AEA-F8C4-4A80-B77D-C94B20A68956 .mov
- drop in file
Uninstall all casks from homebrew. This gets rid of the cask and the user data
brew list --cask | xargs brew uninstall --zap --caskUninstall homebrew
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/uninstall.sh)"Remove nix-darwin
nix --extra-experimental-features "nix-command flakes" run nix-darwin#darwin-uninstallerRemove nix using Determinate Systems
/nix/nix-installer uninstallClean up any nix remnants, there will still be a /nix folder that doesn't contain anything.
sudo rm -rf /etc/nix /var/root/.nix-profile /var/root/.nix-defexpr /var/root/.nix-channels ~/.nix-profile ~/.nix-defexpr ~/.nix-channels
rm -rf ~/.nixpkgs