MacBook setup: the order to work through on the first afternoon

Most MacBook setup advice is a list of settings. The list is not wrong, but it treats every step as equally reversible, and they are not. A few decisions made in the first hour are awkward to change later, and several steps that feel urgent can safely wait a week. Ordering them by how expensive they are to undo produces a shorter afternoon than working through a list of tips.

Three things belong at the front: how data arrives on the machine, which account ends up holding administrator privileges, and whether the Mac is backed up before it starts holding anything worth losing. Everything else is preference, and preference can be revisited.

Migration is the decision to get right before anything else

Setup Assistant, the sequence that runs on first startup and asks for details like country and network, includes migration as one of its steps. That is the cheapest moment to move data from an old machine, because nothing on the new one has to be merged with anything.

Missing that moment is not fatal. Migration Assistant is also an app, found in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder or through Spotlight, and it can be run at any point afterwards with an administrator password. What it transfers is documents, apps, user accounts and settings. What it does not do is delete information from the old Mac or replace macOS on the new one, which is the reassurance that makes running it worthwhile rather than risky.

The preparation is short and each item has a reason. macOS should be up to date on both machines, though they do not have to be on the same version. For a wireless transfer both machines need Wi-Fi on and should be near each other. Antivirus, firewall or VPN software on either machine should be turned off until the transfer finishes, because those are the usual cause of two Macs failing to find each other.

The part worth planning for is what happens with accounts. Transferring an administrator account prompts for a password to be set, and that password is what logs into the account afterwards. Transferring a standard account assigns a temporary password that appears on screen and has to be written down, because the user enters it once and is then prompted to choose their own. If an account with the same name already exists on the new Mac, the choice is to replace it or to rename the incoming one so both survive separately.

That last case is the one that creates the most mess later, and it is created by a specific mistake: completing Setup Assistant by making a fresh account with the same short name as the account on the old machine, then migrating afterwards. Deciding to migrate during setup avoids the collision entirely.

The first account created becomes the administrator

By default the administrator of a Mac is the person who initially set it up. That is convenient and it is also the setting most single user Macs never revisit.

Apple's own recommendation runs the other way. An administrator should create a standard user account to use when administrator privileges are not needed, because if a standard account is compromised the potential harm is far more limited. Administrators can create, manage and delete other users, install and remove software, and change settings, which is a large surface for an account used for daily browsing.

Whether that separation is worth the friction depends on the machine. It costs a password prompt at install time and a second account to keep tidy. On a shared machine it is clearly worth it, and the related settings are in the same area: separate users for each person, each required to log in, so that files and settings stay separate.

Encryption is less of a decision than it looks. On a Mac with Apple silicon or an Apple T2 Security Chip the data is encrypted automatically. FileVault adds to that by requiring the login password before the data can be read, which is the part that matters if the machine is ever out of sight. Turning it on during the first afternoon costs nothing, because there is little data to encrypt yet.

Two smaller settings belong in the same pass. A Mac can be set to log out the current user after a period of inactivity, and to require a password when waking from sleep or the screen saver. A hot corner can be assigned to lock the screen immediately, which is the version of this that actually gets used.

Updates before apps, and the automatic settings to set once

Installing apps onto an out of date system and then updating the system means testing every app twice. Updating first is faster.

Go to System Settings, click General in the sidebar, then click Software Update. The same pane holds the automatic options, and each has a distinct meaning. "Download new updates when available" fetches them without asking but does not install them. "Install macOS updates" installs them. "Install Security Responses and system files" covers system files and Rapid Security Responses, which are the fixes that arrive between releases.

One detail explains why automatic downloads sometimes appear not to work on a laptop: the power adapter has to be plugged in for updates to download automatically. A MacBook used unplugged all week can sit for days without fetching anything.

App Store apps update separately. The Apple menu shows the number of available updates next to App Store, which is the fastest way to notice them without opening the App Store deliberately.

Set up backups while there is nothing to lose

Time Machine backs up the files that were not part of the macOS installation, which means apps, music, photos and documents. It does not back up system files or apps installed during macOS installation, so the backup is smaller than the disk and a restore reinstalls the system rather than restoring it byte for byte.

When it is turned on it runs hourly, daily and weekly backups automatically. It also saves local snapshots on disks using APFS, created hourly, stored on the same disk as the originals, and kept for up to 24 hours or until the space is needed. Those snapshots are useful for recovering a file changed by mistake, and they are not a backup, because they live on the disk they are protecting.

Setting it up takes one connection. Connect an external disk and turn it on, and if no backup disk is configured yet, macOS offers to use it. The alternative path is through settings: click the Time Machine icon in the menu bar and choose Open Time Machine Settings, then click Add Backup Disk. If that icon is not in the menu bar, go to System Settings, click Control Center in the sidebar, scroll to Time Machine, then choose "Show in Menu Bar".

One compatibility fact is worth knowing before relying on a backup for a future machine. A backup created on a Mac running macOS 12 or later can only be restored to a Mac running macOS 11 or later.

The menu bar fills up in the order apps are installed

This is the step no setup checklist includes, and it is the one that quietly determines what the Mac feels like in month two.

Every utility installed during the first week asks for two things: permission to start at login, and a place in the menu bar. Both are granted by default and neither is reviewed afterwards, so the strip across the top of the screen ends up reflecting installation order rather than any decision.

The login side is manageable. Go to System Settings, click General in the sidebar, then click Login Items & Extensions. Items that open automatically can be added or removed there, and a separate list covers apps allowed to run in the background, which is the permission behind background updates and syncing. Holding Shift while clicking Log In at the login window starts a session without opening login items, which is the way to find out what a machine is actually loading.

The menu bar side is harder, because the bar has a fixed height and a fixed amount of room. It holds the menus of whichever app is in front on the left and status icons, Control Center and the clock on the right, and the two compete for one line. macOS offers subtraction: the Control Center pane lists items with a "Show in Menu Bar" option, recent releases add a Menu Bar pane to the System Settings sidebar with a checkbox per control, and any icon can be removed by holding Command and dragging it off the bar. Control-clicking a control in Control Center and choosing Add to Menu Bar does the reverse.

Subtraction has an obvious limit, because most of the icons are there for a reason. The alternative is keeping them installed and out of sight until they are needed, which is what a menu bar manager for macOS does, and what separates these tools is how a hidden icon behaves when it has to be used.

Doing this during setup rather than in month three has one advantage worth the five minutes. At setup the bar is nearly empty, which makes it obvious which app added which icon.

Keyboard and trackpad defaults worth one pass

These are cheap to change and cheap to change back, which is why they belong at the end rather than the beginning.

Secondary click, the Mac name for right click, is a two finger click on a trackpad or Control and a click. Anyone who prefers a different arrangement can set it in System Settings under Trackpad or Mouse, from the "Secondary click" pop-up menu.

The top row of keys controls display brightness, Mission Control, Spotlight and volume by default rather than acting as F1 through F12. To reverse that, go to System Settings, click Keyboard in the sidebar, click Keyboard Shortcuts, click Function Keys, then select "Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys". After that, holding Fn gives back the feature keys.

Neither setting matters to a first time Mac user and both matter enormously to someone arriving from another platform with muscle memory intact.

A working order

Order	Step	Why it is here
1	Migrate during Setup Assistant	Avoids account name collisions entirely
2	Decide on administrator and standard accounts	Changing account roles later is disruptive
3	Turn on FileVault	Cheapest while there is little data
4	Run Software Update and set automatic options	Avoids installing apps onto an old system
5	Connect a disk and turn on Time Machine	Protects everything added after this point
6	Install apps, reviewing login items as they arrive	The only moment the additions are visible
7	Tidy the menu bar	Easiest while it is still nearly empty
8	Keyboard, trackpad, appearance	Reversible in seconds, so last

The order is the useful part, not the count. Steps one through three are awkward to revisit. Steps six through eight can be redone any evening.

What to change first

If the Mac is already set up and this order was not followed, start at step five, because a machine without a backup is the only genuinely urgent case. Then open Login Items & Extensions and read the list, which is usually longer than expected. If the menu bar is already unreadable, Koffret handles that step.