🍎 cutler

Setup automation for your Mac

Pre-built binaries support macOS Big Sur (11.0) or later versions.

# Self-installing script
# See below sections for other methods.
curl -fsSL https://machlit.github.io/cutler/install.sh | /bin/bash

# Initialize a configuration file.
# Basic template includes preferences, Homebrew and external commands.
cutler init

# Modify using your preferred editor.
nano ~/.config/cutler/config.toml

# Apply your preferences.
cutler apply

cutler simplifies the macOS setup pipeline by:

• providing a declarative way to set system settings, without touching the Settings app,
• wrapping around package managers for easy apps/tooling installation, and
• by providing first-class support for external commands to ensure easy extensibility.

All of this happens with a single cutler.toml file in your config directory.

For backend functionality over system preferences, cutler wraps around the preferences APIs exposed by macOS. This allows for direct and instant feedback by just restarting the corresponding services related to the preference.

For wrapping around tooling, cutler includes mature implementations for extracting the data from the selected package managers. Sensitive actions (e.g. installing) are currently outsourced to remain as close to the original functionality as possible.

cutler is still in development and changes in functionality may be common during this stage.

• Resources
• Installation
• Goals
• Contributing
• License

• Complete Documentation (Cookbook)
• macOS defaults list (useful if you're starting out with declaring bare-metal system preferences and have not previously used defaults)

curl -fsSL https://machlit.github.io/cutler/install.sh | /bin/bash

brew install machlit/tap/cutler

cargo install cutler

mise use -g cargo:cutler

The universal goal is simple - provide a reliable way to automate the Mac setup so that you don't have to overthink about it. This consists of the following:

• Reliable restoration of system preferences.
• Reliable restoration of apps/tools using some sort of backend.
• Customizability and authority over certain commands and other stuff.
• Backup and restoration features for advanced things such as fonts, App Store apps.
• ... and more which aren't noted here.

These are all possible features cutler needs to stabilize in order to achieve a v1 release for now.

View the Contribution Guidelines to learn more about contributing to cutler. It also contains resources such as code snippets to make your contribution workflow easier.

This project is permissively licensed and free forever. See the license files mentioned below for the details:

• Apache Software License 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE)
• MIT License (LICENSE-MIT)