First Things to Do on a New M5 MacBook

The temptation with a new M5 MacBook is to install everything you own in the first hour. Resist it for ten minutes. A few decisions made now — while the machine is clean — save you from undoing choices later, and get the laptop behaving the way you want before you build your working setup on top of it.

Before anything else: migrate or commit to clean

Decide this first, because it changes everything after it. Moving from an old Mac? Run Migration Assistant now, before you configure a thing — see migrating to a new M5 Mac. It carries apps, files, and preferences across, and hand-made settings can be overwritten by it. Starting fresh on purpose? Then the rest of this list is your foundation.

Change the defaults that annoy everyone

These are the settings almost everyone eventually changes, so change them now:

1. Show file extensions. Finder → Settings → Advanced → Show all filename extensions. Full detail in showing file extensions.
2. Show the path bar. In Finder, View → Show Path Bar, so you always see where a window is — the path bar.
3. Speed up the Dock if you auto-hide it, so it appears the instant you reach for it — the instant Dock.

The complete pass is in settings to change on a new Mac.

Sort battery and sleep

M5 battery life is long, but two defaults still trip people up: the Mac sleeping mid-download, and sleeping when you close the lid to run an external monitor. Fix both in battery settings and keeping it awake with the lid closed.

Set privacy before you install a pile of apps

Every app you install will ask for permissions. Decide your baseline first — location, analytics, and what gets to see your screen — in privacy settings for a new Mac. Then, and only then, start installing.

Two things worth doing that nobody tells you

Name the Mac properly. System Settings → General → About → Name. The default is something like “Sarah’s MacBook Air”, which is what everyone on a shared network sees, what AirDrop announces, and what shows up in Find My. Two minutes now saves confusion later, especially if you own more than one Mac.

Check what launches at login before it accumulates. System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions. On a fresh Mac this list is nearly empty, which is exactly why now is the time to look — you will recognise anything that appears later. Every app that adds itself here costs you seconds at every startup and memory all day.

What not to bother with

A lot of new-Mac advice is left over from Intel machines and does not apply to Apple silicon:

• Do not “calibrate” the battery. That was for older lithium batteries with different controllers. Modern Macs handle it, and Optimised Battery Charging does more than any manual routine.
• Do not install a cleaner app on day one. A new Mac has nothing to clean. Revisit in a year if disk space actually becomes a problem.
• Do not disable Spotlight indexing. It runs hard for the first hours after setup and then settles. Turning it off breaks search permanently to save a cost that ends on its own.
• Do not turn off SIP unless a specific tool you need requires it and you understand what you are giving up.

Work through the full setup checklist when you have a spare afternoon, and the setup mistakes covers the rest of what to skip.