My Computing Environment Preferences

How I Like Things on My Computers

Terminal & Shell

On Mac

I want to be a person that sits on the command line, but I’m just not. For the rare times that I do, I use the Ghostty terminal application with the default zsh shell on Mac.

My very minor set of configurations includes:

  • ghostty config: I use the Catppuccin Mocha theme
  • prompt config: I use Oh My Posh following this tutorial
  • zsh config: I add the zsh-autosuggestions with a double-tab keybinding to accept autosuggestions, the zsh-syntax-highlighting, and vim keybindings with custom functions to change the cursor shape between normal and insert modes. It’s unremarkable, but the config file can be found on my github here

On Windows

I use Ubuntu via the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). It’s currently configured to use Zsh as the shell, with the Oh My Zsh configuration framework and PowerLevel10k prompt theme. I will likely change this setup in the near future.

RStudio & Positron

I use RStudio and Positron equally.

RStudio Visual Look

For the visual look of RStudio, I use the RStudio theme Darkstudio and my own version of Atom’s One Dark editor theme, along with the Fira Code font. They can be installed as follows:

# rstudio theme
devtools::install_github("https://github.com/rileytwo/darkstudio")

path_to_index <- "/Applications/RStudio.app/Contents/Resources/app/www/index.htm"
darkstudio::activate(path_to_index) # on mac
darkstudio::activate() # on windows (open rstudio with "run as admin")

# editor theme
url <- "https://github.com/dyavorsky/atom-inspired-rstudio-theme/blob/main/atom_inspired.rstheme"
rstudioapi::addTheme(url, apply = TRUE, force = TRUE)

RStudio Shortcuts

I run this complete set of customized shortcuts in order to:

  • avoid conflicts with system shortcuts and window management shortcuts
  • use a consistent set of key bindings for both Windows and Mac
  • remap bindings for operations I rarely use, to core part of my workflow

Positron Visual Look

I use the ‘One Dark Pro Darker’ theme, with minimal other customization. I love how perfectly Positron ‘just works’ out of the box.

Mac Shortcuts

I aggressively edit keyboard shortcuts on my mac. I find most of the defaults unnecessary, which I disable. I heavily utilize spaces, speech-to-text, and screenshots, adding shortcuts for each. Some apps require their own special additions – for example, I can’t believe Command-Enter doesn’t send a message in Mail. I also find the Vimium Chrome extension (which enables keyboard-only navigation within the browser) to be essential.

Other Software

  • Todoist to track things that need to get done. There’s a version for every device and, as a backup, you can always access it from a browser
  • LastPass is my password manager. If you don’t have one yet, you won’t believe how much simpler and more secure authentication can be
  • Zotero for tracking academic literature. While not perfect, it’s substantially better than a system based on a tree of sub-directories and verbose file names
  • Typora for writing markdown in a minimal editor (be sure to grab the onedark theme)
  • Obsidian for maintaining a database of inter-linked markdown-based notes