My macOS Setup - February 2026

Picture of Patrick KerschbaumBy patricktree
  • Terminal Shell: zsh
    • with oh my zsh and the git plugin for branch/status info and aliases.
    • a customization in .zshrc to set the terminal tab title to <idle> so I can tell at a glance which terminals are doing something and which are not:
VS Code terminal tabs: "π - web-mode", "npm run dev", and an idle tab titled "<idle>".
The idle terminal tab is titled "<idle>", making it easy to spot at a glance.
  • Multitasking: macOS spaces and AltTab
    • one macOS space (desktop) = one focus topic.
    • each space has at least one VS Code window and one browser window.
    • all windows maximized.
    • AltTab for window switching with two separate shortcuts:
      • Option+Tab: shows window thumbnails of the current space only, sorted by last-recently-used.
        Lets me quickly switch between windows related to my current focus topic.
      • Cmd+Tab: shows window thumbnails of all spaces, sorted by space index ascending.
        Lets me switch to another focus topic when needed.
AltTab window switcher showing 3 window thumbnails of the current macOS space.
Option+Tab: window thumbnails of the current space only, sorted by last-recently-used.
AltTab window switcher showing 8 window thumbnails across all macOS spaces.
Cmd+Tab: window thumbnails of all spaces, sorted by space index ascending.
  • IDE / Git Diff Viewer / Git Graph UI: VS Code with the built-in git diff views and the Git Graph extension.
  • Terminal Emulator: VS Code Integrated Terminal with "Persistent Sessions" enabled.
  • Node.js version management: NVM
  • Screen capture, screenshot annotation: CleanShot X. Works great, believe me, it is worth the one-time ~$30 investment.
  • Tailscale for my mesh VPN to connect my devices together. Access dev servers running on one machine from another, no port forwarding or firewall config needed - highly recommend.
  • In general I use shortcuts heavily, e.g. Cmd+Option+Left/Right to switch between VS Code tabs or browser tabs.