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>> All right, what is going on, y'all? So,

we seem to be living in an era where

there's new apps popping up left and

right. And I'm someone who loves testing

out new tools [music] to see if they can

make me more productive. So, I think

it's only right that we go over my

updated MacBook setup for software

development as well as any other tasks

that [music] I might be doing on my

laptop. And hopefully, this video is

going to give you some inspiration on

how to set up your own laptop, as well.

Now, as far as the specs of my work

machine go, I'm still on the 16-in

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M1 Pro MacBook Pro. And this July is

actually going to be my third-year

anniversary at my current company. So,

I'm finally able to upgrade this laptop.

But as for now, it's been pretty solid,

and that just goes to show you how good

the Apple silicon chips are. I mean, an

M1 Pro still doing fine [music]

in 2026, that's quite impressive.

Although, I must say that the 16 gigs of

RAM has definitely been a bottleneck

sometimes for me, which is why I like

testing out my changes on sandbox

environment rather than on my local

machine. And sometimes that can be a bit

of an issue if multiple people are

wanting to use sandbox at once. Another

thing I'll be changing with my laptop

upgrade is definitely [music] the size

of the machine. The 16-in screen is

nice. I mean, you get a ton of screen

real estate, but the 16-in machine is

proper heavy. And when I compare it to

the 14-in model, I just I just prefer

this much more. So, yeah, I'm actually

going to be downsizing to a 14-in model

even on my work laptop. Okay, then let's

get to the actual video, and quickly

let's go over my system settings so we

get those out the way. First things

first, I make sure that all the items

are hidden on the desktop. I mean, this

is a must because I accumulate so much

random stuff here. Then as for the dock

itself, it stays around the default

size, but I like bumping up the

magnification. And of course, the dock

is positioned at the bottom of the

screen. If you have the dock on the

sidebar, then I don't know what you're

doing. Then as for my hot corners, on

the bottom left, I have this lock screen

hot corner. So, whenever I need to go to

the bathroom or something, I can quickly

lock the screen. And lastly, this isn't

really a system setting, but I have this

app called iStat Menus running, which

brings these system metrics to the top

of my MacBook. I like numbers, so it's

interesting to see how my machine

behaves under different loads, and it's

also helpful for my review videos. And

next, let's go over my coding

environment, and this is the area where

I don't like to experiment too much. You

know, once I get used to an IDE, for

example, and I switch to a new one,

[music] then I kind of have to relearn

how to become productive on that new

IDE. So, I find that ultimately,

changing these coding tools can actually

hold you [music] back. So, as my IDE,

I'm running VS Code, and this is one of

them ones that you try to escape, but

you just can't. A lot of people tried

switching away from it, but then they

brought the Claude Code extension into

VS Code, and now what do you know?

Everyone's back on VS Code again. I do

also really like the JetBrains IDEs, but

when you use them professionally, you

need a license, and since I don't have a

huge preference here, I just go with the

free alternative. And a lot of you have

been asking for my VS Code theme. Atom

One Dark theme, which is quite common,

but I like it as it's not too

distracting. Then as for the extensions

in VS Code, I have quite a few of them,

but let's go over the most important

ones. And first, we of course got Claude

Code. We finally got it approved a few

months back, so that's what I'm on

currently. I know there's a lot of

controversial stuff happening with the

pricing and stuff, but the product

itself is just too good to ignore at the

moment. With Claude Code, you of course

get the chat window, and you can switch

between different modes, so agentic mode

or ask mode, et cetera. But what takes

things to the next level are the

different that you can create.

Basically, with these skills, you can

tell Claude how to handle certain tasks,

which makes it more efficient. Also,

with Claude Code, you get a CLI tool, so

if you prefer working in the terminal,

then you can also use that. Then another

extension that's a must-have for me is

the Vim plugin for VS Code, which

basically brings the Vim key binds into

the IDE itself. I think an underrated

benefit for me with this extension

specifically is that whenever I connect

to a remote server and need to edit

files there, then I'm already familiar

with the Vim key binds as I use them on

my local as well. But of course, the

main benefit here is that it makes

[music] editing files way faster because

I can bounce around the file, edit

multiple lines at the same time, and

things of this nature. I'm by no means

am I a Vim expert, but it still does

speed things up a lot. Then the rest of

the extensions are kind of language

specific things, you know, regular stuff

related to testing, etc. Next we got

Warp, which is kind of a whole coding

environment nowadays, but I use the

terminal feature the most. In all

honesty, I don't get the hate on Warp. I

think it's a great product, and recently

they even open-sourced it. So, I mean,

you kind of have to respect it. Anyways,

with Warp, you get a terminal and a

coding environment in one place, which

they call the [music] agentic

development environment. Basically, you

can run agents in parallel that do

coding work, but you can also edit the

files yourself whenever you need to do

some manual fixes. But yeah, like I

said, my favorite part is for sure the

terminal interface. It's just so clean,

has good auto complete, and also allows

you to chat to an LLM right then and

there in the terminal, which makes it so

that I don't need to switch to ChatGPT

or something when I'm in the terminal

and I have a question in mind. Then when

it comes to running containers locally,

I don't know many reasons you would use

Docker Desktop anymore, at least on your

personal machine. It eats a ton of

resources, and unless you have your own

data center, then saving resources where

possible just seems logical nowadays.

So, for running containers, I personally

use OrbStack, but if you're doing

commercial work, then go with Podman

instead. OrbStack is basically a

lightweight version of Docker Desktop,

and it works pretty much the same as

Docker Desktop. Podman on the other hand

is more security-focused with it being

demonless, and by default runs rootless

containers. So, in simple terms, pretty

much all the containers run under your

user account on your host machine. And

lastly, on the coding apps, I wanted to

highlight Bruno, which is, in simple

terms, a Postman alternative. Basically,

the story here is that all my teammates

moved away from Postman, and one of my

teammates has been using Bruno for a

long time. So, he already had the Bruno

templates for a lot of the things that

we do, which made switching to Bruno

just make sense. And this collaboration

stuff is actually one of Bruno's biggest

selling points, as well as the fact that

you can easily migrate to it from

Postman. And yeah, Bruno is also open

source, which is cool. And the stuff

that kind of goes hand in hand with my

coding apps are going to be my

productivity apps. So this going to

include all the apps that I use to

manage the work that I do within my

coding apps, and I really look at the

productivity [music] apps as kind of the

glue that brings everything together.

First things first, one app that's

become an absolute must for me here is

monday.com. This is the platform I use

to keep track of all my tickets related

to my portfolio tracking app that I've

been building on the channel lately.

Anyways, you probably know monday.com as

this kind of task management platform,

but they've built so much more on top of

that. For example, recently they rolled

out their Monday AI agents. And yes, I

know, I know, more AI. Trust me, this is

an actual useful use case of AI that

boosts your productivity, and it's not

just another chatbot feature. You can

think of Monday agents as kind of like

interns working for you that live inside

of the monday.com [music] ecosystem. So

they have the full context across your

workspace and have access to your

projects, flagging delays, writing

reports, etc. They have a bunch of

pre-built agents that you can choose

from, but of course you can also build

your own agent for your specific needs.

For example, like I said, I plan all my

tickets here, and I can assign the

tickets a label, you know, whether it's

a task or a bug or something else. And

my Monday AI agent can assign the ticket

a priority, as well as points. Also, I

have my research agent that I can

delegate research tasks to, for example,

related to best practices when it comes

to UI/UX, architecture, and things of

this nature. So in a nutshell, with

Monday AI agents, the entire project

management side of the process is taken

care of for me, and I can just focus on

the stuff that actually moves the

needle, which for me is building the

actual app. And yeah, that's kind of my

project management setup currently. So

if you're looking for a platform for

managing your projects, then highly

recommend you give monday.com and Monday

AI agents a shot. They even offer a free

trial, so there's literally no risk for

you. Anyways, I'll leave the first link

in the description where [music] you can

sign up for monday.com, and a big thank

you to monday.com for supporting the

channel and sponsoring the [music]

video. The next a bit of a more

controversial app is going to be my

browser, and yeah, I'm back on Arc. I

know, I know. I tried switching to Zen,

but some stuff just didn't work properly

on Zen like shortcuts on some web apps I

was using, and other random stuff like

this kept popping up. So, eventually I

just switched back to Arc. Maybe you'd

be able to configure Zen to fix those

things, but I don't know. I never took

the time to do so. Anyways, Arc is

Chromium-based, and the UI is just by

far the cleanest I've seen on any

browser. Also, you get these different

spaces that you can set up. So, for

example, you can have your own space for

your personal stuff where you're logged

into your personal accounts, and then

you have another space for your

professional stuff. Not going to lie,

Arc in 2026 is probably a big offset

violation now that they stopped actively

developing it. They say they'll still do

security patches whenever needed, but I

do use Chrome for all my banking and

other more important stuff. I don't

know, man. The whole browser situation

is annoying because I really love the

user experience on Arc, and I just

[music] haven't found a replacement for

it yet. So, if you know some good

browsers out there, then please let me

know. The next we still have Raycast,

which I mainly use for navigating across

apps, resizing windows, and other stuff

like if I need to make calculations

fast, for example. It's really become

the cornerstone for my productivity, and

it speeds things up a lot once you get

used to it. It's kind of the same story

I have with the Vim extension in VS

Code, where I'm not a Raycast Pro, but I

think I still get really good value out

of it. Apple's improved Spotlight can do

most of the stuff that Raycast does, but

in typical Apple fashion, the Spotlight

isn't as customizable as Raycast. So,

this comes down to personal preference

really at the end of the day. But yeah,

my favorite example I always use for

Raycast is the quick link feature that I

use for opening up my projects inside of

my IDE quickly. So, yeah, all [music] I

need to do is type in the name of the

project, and then Raycast is going to

open it up inside of my IDE. Then I

still use Notion for all of my

note-taking related things. I really

have no issues with Notion, so I just

haven't felt the need to switch away

from it. Things simply just work, and

they keep bringing out new features all

the time, so I like it. They also have

agents in the app that help you build

different dashboards, etc. And many of

my friends even wipe code apps using

Notion as a database, which has been fun

to see. Mind you, these guys don't know

anything about coding, and they're still

able to build stuff using Notion. Then

up next, we have Miro. This is something

I still use on a weekly basis to this

day. For example, whenever I'm writing a

technical spec on a feature I'm working

on, then I can easily showcase how the

feature is going to work using Miro, and

other people can immediately see what

I'm trying to go for without even having

to read the whole spec yet. But Miro

also allows your team to collaborate on

the same board together. So, for

example, we host our sprint retros in

Miro, and everyone can write these

sticky notes about things that went

well, what needs to be improved, and

things of this nature. And yeah, then we

go over those sticky notes together. So,

it really is a great tool for teams. For

running local LLMs, I still use Ollama,

which basically makes it super easy to

[music] manage these models on your

local laptop. Of course, my current

machine isn't powerful enough to run the

best models out there, but I like

testing stuff out every now and then and

see how the open-source models are

evolving. If you have like 64 plus gigs

of RAM, then you could even run a decent

local model and hook that up to Claude

Code, and you won't have to worry about

token usage anymore. So, that's

ultimately my goal as well. Just imagine

coding in a plane or a train without

having an internet connection and still

having access to AI. And lastly, on the

productivity app section, we have Slack,

which I basically use to communicate

with my teammates. This is pretty

standard stuff, and I personally prefer

Slack over something like Microsoft

Teams. I don't know, Slack just feels a

little bit less bloated. Then let's

quickly go over my creative apps, and

not much has changed here, honestly. But

these are basically all the apps that I

use to create [music] these videos here

on the channel. So, these apps kind of

have a special place in my heart. As my

main editing app, I'm still on DaVinci

Resolve. I prefer it over something like

Premiere Pro since DaVinci Resolve

[music] just has this one-time fee

instead of a monthly subscription. And

the color grading features are really

next-level on DaVinci Resolve. Also,

DaVinci Resolve uses this node system,

which just feels very natural to me. But

yeah, with DaVinci Resolve, you can cook

up pretty much anything you want, and

even their free tier is really good. You

only really need the paid tier once you

upgrade to a proper camera. Next, we

have Lightroom, which is my go-to app

for color grading pictures. Blackmagic

recently introduced a competitor to

Lightroom inside of DaVinci Resolve,

which I haven't tried yet, but I might

move away from Lightroom soon if that's

good enough. As of right now, though,

Lightroom just simply is the best app

I've tried for specifically color

grading pictures. It's not meant for

making proper edits like adding text and

stuff to the photos, but it gives you

such good tooling for adjusting the

brightness, colors, masking things, and

stuff like this that it's really hard to

move away from. And lastly, for the

quote-unquote proper photo edits, I use

Affinity Photo. This is the same case as

with DaVinci Resolve. So, the reason I

prefer this over something like

Photoshop is simply the fact that it

doesn't require a subscription. You can

do pretty much all the same stuff as you

do on Photoshop, but yeah, it's just

cheaper. But yeah, that's been my

current MacBook setup for 2026. Let me

know what you would change, and also let

me know if you got some inspiration for

your own setup as well. And as always,

thank you so much for watching all the

way to the end, [music] and I'll see you

in the next one.

Peace.