nix #

Personal macOS system configuration using nix-darwin + home-manager, managed as a flake.

Usage #

darwin-rebuild switch --flake ~/.config/nix

(aliased to dr in fish, see home/shell.nix)

Structure #

flake.nix          entry point (inputs, username/hostname, wmMode/wmEngine,
                   darwinConfiguration)
modules/           system-level (nix-darwin) config
  nix-core.nix        nix settings (flakes, gc, auto-optimise)
  system.nix          macOS defaults & tweaks
  apps.nix            homebrew (casks/brews/mas apps)
  fonts.nix           custom font derivations
  host-users.nix      hostname + user account
home/              user-level (home-manager) config, one file per tool
  <tool>.nix          wires up home.file/home.activation for <tool>
  <tool>/             the actual config files <tool>.nix deploys (dotfiles,
                       scripts, patches) - kept out of the .nix so they read
                       and diff like normal config, not embedded strings

wmMode and wmEngine, set at the top of flake.nix, gate most of the window-management-related config (see Window management).

macOS tweaks applied #

All set declaratively in modules/system.nix:

• Trackpad: tap to click off, three-finger drag on, three-finger swipe between pages kept on, vertical/four-finger swipes off; pinch gestures (Mission Control / App Exposé / Launchpad & Show Desktop) on in normal mode, off in tiling mode (the WM replaces them)
• Keyboard: fast key repeat, no auto-capitalize/dash/period/quote substitution, no autocorrect
• Windows: no window animations, drag windows with ctrl+cmd (anywhere in the window); title-bar double-click and macOS window tiling (edge drag / opt-drag) on in normal mode, disabled in tiling mode; tiled margins always off; dragging to top of screen triggers Mission Control only in normal mode
• Display: built-in display pinned to "More Space" scaling via displayplacer (activation script)
• Dock: auto-hide, bottom, no rearranging by most-recently-used; instant reveal in normal mode, effectively never shows in tiling mode (huge delay)
• Menu bar: analog clock, hidden in fullscreen
• Finder: show all file extensions, path bar + status bar, column view by default, Quit menu item, show external/USB/network drives on desktop
• Desktop: icons hidden (Stage Manager style)
• Screenshots: saved as PNG to ~/Pictures/Screenshots
• Screensaver: require password immediately on wake
• Touch ID for sudo enabled
• Light mode, silent system sounds, no Apple ad personalization
• Default shells: fish (login) and zsh, both registered system-wide

Apps (Homebrew, declared in modules/apps.nix) #

• Browsers: Brave, Firefox, Chrome, Helium, Tor, Dia
• Development: VS Code, Cursor, Zed, Obsidian, JetBrains Toolbox, OrbStack, Postman, Sequel Ace, TablePlus, Yaak, Supacode, Amp, opencode (via anomalyco/tap), Claude (desktop) & Claude Code, Codex, Copilot CLI
• Communication: Discord, Telegram, Signal, nchat (via d99kris/nchat)
• Productivity & utilities: 1Password (+ CLI), ChatGPT, Blip, Free Download Manager, Tailscale, Gloomberb, Itsycal, Wispr Flow, AnyDesk
• Media & design: Figma, GIMP, IINA, OBS, Spotify
• System & other: AeroSpace (tiling WM), Ghostty, Nerd Fonts, Transmission, UTM, Steam, Xonotic
• Mac App Store: WhatsApp, WireGuard, Windows App, Xcode
• CLI (brew): node/npm, ruby, rust, scrcpy, openvpn, container, postgrest, fabric-ai, herdr, happy-coder, jcode, git-filter-repo, mas, trash, mole, mdv, polygraph (full list in modules/apps.nix)

Homebrew's openjdk formula is keg-only, so modules/system.nix symlinks it into /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines via an activation script so /usr/libexec/java_home and GUI apps can find it.

Terminal / shell #

• Shell: fish with starship prompt, Homebrew on PATH
• Terminal: Ghostty — Tokyo Night, ComicShannsMono Nerd Font Mono, no "Last login" banner (~/.hushlogin)
• CLI tools (home/core.nix): ripgrep, fzf, eza, zoxide, bat (Tokyo Night theme), yazi, zellij (Tokyo Night, minimal), skim, jq, gh, htop, fastfetch, atuin (Tokyo Night theme), ollama, tokei, ffmpeg, and language servers/toolchains for Go, Rust, Python, Node + Bun, Lua, Java

Editors #

• Helix — primary editor, Tokyo Night theme (transparent background), LSPs for Nix/Go/Python/Lua/TS/Java
• Neovim — NvChad-based config, Tokyo Night theme (transparent), set as $EDITOR
• Zed

Window management #

Two knobs at the top of flake.nix control the desktop:

• wmMode — "tiling" or "normal". Tiling runs a WM engine, hides the dock (long delay) and menu bar; normal restores stock macOS (instant dock, pinch gestures and macOS window tiling back). home/wm-mode.nix reconciles the running state to match on every activation — starts/stops the engine, manages the login item / launchd service, and makes sure the two mutually-exclusive engines never run at once.
• wmEngine — which tiling engine to use when wmMode == "tiling":
  • AeroSpace — vim-style keybindings (alt+hjkl), alt+enter opens a new Ghostty window, no private APIs (config: home/aerospace/aerospace.toml)
  • Rift — private-API Rust WM trial, full binding parity with AeroSpace (config: home/rift/config.toml)

AeroSpace is only deployed when wmMode == "tiling" (see home/default.nix); the rift config is only deployed when wmEngine == "rift", so the two configs never fight over keybindings.

Git #

Configured in home/git.nix: main as default branch, autosetup remote on push, rebase on pull, short aliases (gs, ga, gc, gp, gl, ...). Commits are SSH-signed with a key stored in 1Password (op-ssh-sign).