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Setting up an M2 MacBook Air: the settings first, then the apps
M2 MacBook Air 買了不知從何開始？一次看懂 Mac 入門必備設定與必裝的 App！
About this video
Ten minutes for a machine that had just shipped: what to change in a new M2 MacBook Air before installing anything, then six apps the channel considers essential, with Rectangle for window snapping, Bartender for the menu bar and One Switch for the toggles that otherwise live three panes deep. Recorded in August 2022, so the interface is Monterey's.
The description asks the question directly — you have bought a new MacBook Air, now what? — and answers it in two parts, which is also the structure: settings first, so the machine stops feeling like a demo unit, and apps second, so each app is doing something the settings could not.
The app list is short and specific: Rectangle, Bartender, One Switch, plus TopNotch, Vivid and AirBuddy. Read together they are a single complaint. Two of the six deal with the menu bar, which is the one part of macOS that has never had enough room for a heavy user; one is a window manager, which is the feature Apple did not ship until macOS 15; and the rest are small utilities that add a control the system keeps three panes deep.
Rectangle is the one to note if you only take one from the list. Snapping a window to half a screen is a habit Windows users arrive with, macOS did not answer it until Sequoia, and a third-party utility was the standard answer for the whole decade before that.
Three of the six — TopNotch, Vivid, AirBuddy — have no page on Nuanyue, so this record links only Rectangle, Bartender and One Switch. Recorded in August 2022 on Monterey, which is also why the video assumes a notch to manage and no built-in window tiling at all.
What it covers
- The split is settings first, apps second, and the six apps are all fixes for something the settings pass could not do.
- Rectangle is the only window manager on the list, and it addresses a gap macOS still had in 2022 — snapping a window to half a screen.
- Bartender and One Switch both exist because the menu bar is where macOS gives least room and most of what a heavy user wants to reach.
- Three of the six apps named — TopNotch, Vivid and AirBuddy — have no page on Nuanyue, so only the three that do are linked from this record.
