Mac Weekend Essentials

What's in this pack

This is the rig a working engineer would build on a fresh macOS in one Saturday afternoon — not a 50-app shopping list. Every pick here is open-source, actively maintained, and earns its keyboard shortcut. The order matters: each tool unlocks the next.

The whole stack stays under 300 MB on disk and burns <1% CPU at rest on Apple Silicon. No subscriptions, no telemetry, no Electron wrappers around a website (looking at you, every paid alternative).

Install in this order

1. Cerebro — the launcher. Start here because every later tool gets bound to a Cerebro action eventually. Spotlight replacement with plugin search.
2. Rectangle — keyboard window snap (⌃⌥←/→). Lowest-friction win, immediate dopamine, sells the rest of the rig.
3. Amethyst — auto-tiling WM. Once you've tasted Rectangle's manual snap for a week, Amethyst's automatic tiling feels obvious. Toggle with ⌥⇧Z.
4. Karabiner-Elements — remap Caps Lock to Hyper key (⌃⌥⇧⌘). This is the secret door. Hyper-anything becomes a free, never-used global shortcut for the next 30 tools.
5. Hammerspoon — Lua-scripted global automation. With Hyper + Hammerspoon, you can write a Lua function and bind it to Hyper+T to launch terminal anywhere. This is where productivity actually compounds.
6. Maccy — clipboard history, ⌘⇧V. Minimal, native, four hotkey wars solved. Start here.
7. CopyQ — power-user clipboard with scripting, tabs, pinning, image clips. Most don't need it. If you do, you already know.
8. IINA — modern video player. Replaces QuickTime + VLC, native Apple Silicon, picture-in-picture works.
9. SpaceVim — opinionated Vim distribution. Weekend project: spend 2 hours here, save 2 hours/week forever.

How they fit together

Cerebro (launcher)
   │
   ├─ launches apps + searches files
   │
Karabiner (Caps → Hyper)
   │
   ├─ Hammerspoon binds Hyper+X to anything
   │     └─ window arrange, app focus, mode-switch HUDs
   │
Rectangle (manual snap)  ⟵  Amethyst (auto tile)
   │
   └─ both bound under Hyper+arrow / Hyper+space

Maccy (clipboard) ──┐
                    ├─ both share ⌘⇧V — pick one
CopyQ (clipboard) ──┘

IINA + SpaceVim — independent quality-of-life upgrades

The four-tool combo Cerebro + Karabiner + Hammerspoon + Rectangle/Amethyst is where the rig stops feeling like "installed apps" and starts feeling like a single coherent input system. Don't skip Karabiner — without Hyper key, Hammerspoon stays a curiosity.

Tradeoffs you'll hit

• Rectangle vs Amethyst — Rectangle is ⌃⌥→ to snap right half (deliberate, predictable). Amethyst rearranges everything automatically (faster, occasionally surprises you). Most converts run both: Rectangle for code review (two specific windows), Amethyst for browsing (10 random tabs).
• Maccy vs CopyQ — Maccy = 5 MB and Just Works. CopyQ = 80 MB, Qt-based, scriptable. Install Maccy first; only upgrade to CopyQ when you find yourself wishing your clipboard could do if image then OCR.
• Cerebro vs Raycast — Raycast is the closed-source incumbent (better polish, paid AI features). Cerebro is the open fork worth standing behind if you care about extensibility and don't want a SaaS dependency. Both reasonable; this pack picks open.
• Hammerspoon learning curve — first hour is rough (Lua is not JS). Worth it: every other automation tool is a walled garden by comparison.

Common pitfalls

• Granting Accessibility access — macOS will ask repeatedly. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility and enable all 9 tools in one pass. Saves 30 minutes of "why isn't this working".
• Karabiner + corporate MDM — Karabiner ships a kernel extension. Some MDM profiles block it. Test on a fresh user account first if you're on managed hardware.
• Hammerspoon config in iCloud Drive — don't. Symlinks break. Keep ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua on local disk, version-control with git.
• Amethyst + external monitor unplug — windows can end up off-screen. Bind a "reset layout" hotkey early.
• Rectangle Pro vs Rectangle — Pro is paid, optional. The free version covers 95% of what you'll do. Don't pay before you've used it for a month.