New M5 Mac Setup Checklist: What to Do First

A new M5 Mac is genuinely fast the moment you open it. It is also, out of the box, configured for the average person Apple imagines rather than for you — scrollbars hidden, file extensions off, a Dock full of apps you will never launch. None of that is a flaw, but all of it is worth ten minutes on day one. This is the order to do it in, so nothing you set gets wiped by a step you run afterwards.

1. Migrate first, configure second

If you are moving from an older Mac, run Migration Assistant before you touch a single setting. It carries over your apps, files, accounts, and most preferences, and anything you configure by hand beforehand can be overwritten by what it brings across. See the full walkthrough in migrating to a new M5 Mac. Starting fresh instead? Skip straight to step 2.

2. Change the settings Apple got wrong for you

A handful of defaults are worth flipping on every Mac. The big ones:

• Show file extensions so you can see what a file actually is — see showing file extensions.
• Show the Finder path bar so you always know where you are — the path bar.
• Speed up the Dock and key repeat, both of which ship slower than they need to be.

The complete list lives in settings to change on a new Mac.

3. Fix the battery and sleep behaviour

M5 MacBooks have excellent battery life, but the default sleep settings still fight you in two common cases: long downloads and closed-lid work with an external display. Sort both now — battery settings and keeping the lid-closed Mac awake.

4. Tighten privacy before you install everything

Do this before you install a pile of apps, because each one will ask for permissions and it is easier to decide with a clean slate. Walk through the privacy settings.

5. Make it quick, then make it yours

Turn off the animations you do not need — speeding up a new Mac — then set up the Dock, screenshots, and menu bar the way you actually work. And glance at the setup mistakes to avoid so you do not undo your own work.

The order matters more than the list

Every item above appears in a hundred other setup guides. What those guides usually leave out is that the sequence is load-bearing, for three specific reasons.

Migration overwrites preferences. Migration Assistant brings across the contents of ~/Library/Preferences from your old Mac. If you spend an hour configuring Finder and the Dock first, then migrate, you get your old settings back and your hour is gone. Migrate, then configure.

Some settings only apply going forward. Showing file extensions changes how Finder displays what is already there, so order does not matter for that one. But the screenshot save location only affects screenshots taken after you change it, and .DS_Store suppression does not remove the files already written to a network drive. Set those before you start working, not after.

Permissions are easier to judge on an empty machine. Install thirty apps first and you will face thirty permission prompts in a week, each one out of context, and you will click Allow to make them stop. Set your baseline while nothing is installed and each later prompt stands out as a real decision.

Write down what you change

The one habit that separates people who tune their Mac confidently from people who are scared to touch it: read a setting's current value before you change it. Every defaults write has a matching read.

# Check the value BEFORE you change anything
defaults read com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier

If it comes back does not exist, the setting has never been touched on this Mac, and defaults delete is your undo. If it returns a number, note it down — that number is your undo, and it is more reliable than any article you found it in, including this one. Six months from now, that note is the difference between fixing something in ten seconds and reinstalling macOS.