macOS dotfiles

_{FlashSpace + SketchyBar + JankyBorders + Raycast}

Personal Apple Silicon macOS configuration managed with Nix, nix-darwin, Home Manager, and Homebrew. The goal is a minimal desktop with fast virtual workspaces, keyboard-driven app launching and window actions, and a custom status bar.

The active setup no longer uses Aerospace. Workspace management is split between FlashSpace and Raycast, with SketchyBar reflecting the current FlashSpace state.

Desktop workflow

• Workspaces: FlashSpace groups applications into named virtual workspaces. Activating one presents its assigned apps and hides the other apps on that display, avoiding native macOS Spaces switching animations.
• Launcher and window actions: Raycast handles application launching, keyboard shortcuts, workflows, and window-management commands.
• Status bar: The custom SketchyBar configuration is written in Lua. It queries the FlashSpace CLI for workspaces and running applications, highlights active workspaces, reacts to workspace changes, and switches workspaces when an item is clicked. Home Manager installs the SbarLua module from nixpkgs; Homebrew provides the Lua runtime used by the SketchyBar service.
• Window borders: JankyBorders provides focused-window borders.
• Terminal: WezTerm with Starship, Zsh, Neovim, and the CLI tools declared in home.nix.

FlashSpace workspace definitions and Raycast preferences remain app-managed. Raycast settings should be restored through Cloud Sync or an encrypted .rayconfig export rather than by copying its internal application database.

Configuration management

• flake.nix pins nixpkgs, nix-darwin, Home Manager, and nix-homebrew.
• configuration.nix manages macOS defaults and the declarative Homebrew bundle.
• home.nix manages user packages, shell configuration, environment variables, and links into home/.
• home/.config/sketchybar/ contains the Lua status-bar configuration and its FlashSpace integration.
• home/.config/borders/ contains the JankyBorders configuration.
• packages/ contains local Nix packages that are not available in nixpkgs.

Homebrew cleanup uses zap, so applications and formulae that should survive a rebuild must be declared in configuration.nix.

Installation

Requirements:

• Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 14 or later
• Xcode Command Line Tools and Git
• An administrator account for the initial nix-darwin activation

From the repository root, run:

./bootstrap.sh

The bootstrap installs Determinate Nix when needed, links the repository to ~/.dotfiles, verifies the configured macOS username, and performs the first nix-darwin switch.

After changing the configuration, apply it with:

./rebuild.sh

The old setup.sh is retained only as a historical reference and should not be used; it predates the Nix configuration and still describes the former Aerospace setup.

After the first rebuild

1. Enable Displays have separate Spaces in macOS Desktop & Dock settings.

2. Open FlashSpace and Raycast and grant the macOS permissions they request.

3. Configure or restore the FlashSpace workspaces.

4. Restore Raycast through Cloud Sync or import an encrypted .rayconfig backup.

5. Start SketchyBar as a Homebrew service:

   brew services start sketchybar

Future SketchyBar restarts should also be managed through brew services.