My MacOS set up

Settings > General:

• Checkmark “Use dark menu bar and Dock” (looks more like Windows 10 that way)
• Uncheck “Automatically hide and show menu bar” (so you can treat it more like the task bar on Windows)

Settings > Dock:

• Make your Dock smaller (about the height of Windows 10’s task bar)
• Optional: put your Dock on the left or right side of the screen instead of the bottom
• Checkmark “Minimize windows into application icon” so that every app icon on the dock is also associated with all instances of that app, like in Windows
• Uncheck “Automatically hide and show the Dock” (again, to be able to treat it more like Windows 10’s task bar)

Settings > Mission Control

• Uncheck “Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use” (so that when you use multiple desktops that they don’t just move around randomly)
• Uncheck “When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application” (so that you can actually treat multiple desktops as separate desktops)
• Uncheck “Group windows by application”
• Turn off the Dashboard (it’s useless)

Settings > Security & Privacy

• Make sure FireVault (Apple’s weird name for disk encryption) is turned on

Settings > Built-in Retina Display > Night Shift

• Turn on Night Shift (Apple’s implementation of Flux, to save your eyes at night). In my opinion, just turn up the Color Temperature all the way, as Apple’s default isn’t enough.

Settings > Keyboard

• If you have a Touch Bar, I like putting my keyboard back to how the keyboard used to be before it was implemented:
• Set “Touch Bar shows” to “Expanded Control Strip”
• Set “Press Fn key to” to “Show F1, F2, etc. Keys”

Settings > Trackpad > Point & Click

• Uncheck “Tap to click” (it’s annoying)

Settings > Trackpad > More Gestures

• Uncheck “Swipe between pages” (I don’t like using that gesture to go back in my browser, but some people do — I’d personally prefer it to go between tabs in my browser, but until then, I’m keeping it disabled)
• Change “Swipe between full-screen apps” to four fingers (less mistakes)
• Uncheck “Notification center” (one less gesture to confuse the touchpad)
• Change “Mission Control” to four fingers (less mistakes)
• Uncheck the last three gestures (not really useful IMO)

Software

• Get your forward delete back by turning your power button into forward delete: https://github.com/pkamb/PowerKey
• Install iStat to get your task bar calendar back

Finder

Finder > Preferences > General

• Disable most of the “Show these items on the desktop” checkmarks — they’ll still show up in finder

Finder > Preference > Sidebar

• I enable all Favorites besides Recents (I don’t find it useful) and iCloud Drive (I don’t use iCloud)
• Especially important is to checkmark your “Hard Disks” and “External Hard Disks” under “Devices” (so that they get treated like they do in Windows 10)
• Disable “Tags” (never found a use for them)

Finder > Preference > Advanced

• Checkmark “Show all filename extensions” (safety first)
• Checkmark “Keep folders on top when sorting by name” (makes it like Windows 10)
• Change “When performing a search” to “Search the current folder”