A few months ago I had to give up my primary computer, and had just purchased a new iMac. In doing so, I came up with a checklist of things to do before disposing of an old Mac, and when installing on a new one.

Recently Aleen was going through something similar, and she encouraged me to post my lists.

I’m not going to cover backing up, installing macOS, or any of the other obvious steps. These are just the things I always seem to forget.

Cleaning Your Mac

These are the things I do before giving up a Mac:

• Remove Dropbox
• Disassociate the computer with the iTunes Store
• Disassociate the computer with the Mac App Store
• Disassociate the computer with iMessage in Messages.app
• Turn off Find My Mac
• Remove the Mac from my support profile
• If desired, reinstall macOS as per Apple’s instructions

Re-installing on a New Mac

In no particular order, these are the things that I do and install once I get a new Mac. Naturally, this list may or may not work for you.

• 1Password
• Install Dropbox
• Install Alfred
• In System Preferences
  • Add my Google Apps account to macOS
  • Set up Time Machine
  • Modify the region format in Language & Region → Advanced → Dates. America has it wrong; it should be DD/MM/YYYY.
  • Set up the screen saver to be Photo Mobile of our shared iCloud photo album of Declan pictures.
    • On a work computer, I use Aerial instead.
  • Set up Hot Corners in Desktop & Screen Saver → Hot Corners. I use:
    • ↖ = Mission Control
    • ↗ = Desktop
    • ↙ = Start Screen Saver
    • ↘ = Put Display to Sleep
• Install Slack
• Install Homebrew
  • Install ffmpeg
  • Install wget
  • Install exiftool
  • Install fish
    • brew install fish
    • sudo emacs /etc/shells
      • Append /usr/local/bin/fish
    • chsh -s /usr/local/bin/fish
    • Copy over the old fish config in ~/.config/fish/fish.config
  • Install node
• Install nodemon: npm install -g nodemon
• Install Visual Studio Code
• Install ImageOptim
• Install Chrome (my Flash quarantine)
• Install Google Photos Uploader
• Install Crashplan
• Install Skype, Call Recorder, Piezo, and Audio Hijack
• Install Plex Media Server
• Install video-transcoding
  • brew install caskroom/cask/handbrakecli
  • brew install mkvtoolnix
  • brew install mp4v2
  • brew install mplayer
  • gem install video_transcoding
• Install Subler
• Install MakeMKV
• Install Deliveries
• Install Ghostery
• Install Spotify
• Install Tweetbot
  • Add @caseyliss
  • Add @caseylisscom
  • Add @atpfm
  • Add @_analoguefm
• Install Colloquy
• Install GeoTag
• Install Day One
• Install Moneywell
• Install iStat Menus
• Install f.lux
• Install Fantastical 1
• On laptops, install TripMode

Additionally, the following groups of files should be transferred:

• Music
• ~/Desktop
• ~/Desktop/Incoming (basically, my dumping ground)
• ~/Downloads if anything is there
• ~/Documents

Naturally, your mileage may vary. But that’s my list.