laptop

Laptop is a shell script that sets up a Mac computer for web and mobile development. You download the script, review it, run it, and it installs a collection of developer tools automatically. The whole process takes under 15 minutes on a typical machine.

The script is designed to be run more than once safely. If a tool is already installed and up to date, the script skips it. If a newer version is available, it upgrades it. This means you can re-run it after a macOS update or on a freshly wiped machine without worrying about conflicts.

What gets installed covers the common foundations of web development on a Mac: Homebrew (a package manager for installing other tools), Git for version control, a handful of command-line utilities, Node.js and Ruby runtimes with their package managers, Postgres and Redis databases, and tools for interacting with services like Heroku and GitHub. It also installs Rosetta 2, which lets older tools run on newer Apple Silicon processors.

If you need to add anything beyond what the script installs by default, you can put extra instructions in a file called ~/.laptop.local. That file runs at the end of the main script and can add packages, create configurations, or run any other setup steps you need. The README includes an example showing how to add extra tools via Homebrew.

The project is maintained by thoughtbot, a software consultancy. It supports the four most recent major versions of macOS and works on both Intel and Apple Silicon hardware. The script is open source under a permissive license.