Mac Home Manager configurations

Home Manager configurations for my personal and work macOS accounts on Apple Silicon.

Profiles

• jmp: personal account
• work: work account

Fresh Mac setup

Use these steps on a brand new Mac before this managed Home Manager environment exists.

1. Install manual prerequisites.

   Do not use Homebrew for this setup. Install these with Apple-provided tools or official vendor installers only:

   • Determinate Nix: download and run Determinate.pkg from https://determinate.systems/nix/

   • Xcode Command Line Tools: install with:

     xcode-select --install

   • Ghostty: download the official macOS .dmg from https://ghostty.org/ and drag Ghostty.app into /Applications.

   • SauceCodePro Nerd Font Mono: download SauceCodePro from https://www.nerdfonts.com/font-downloads and install the font files with Font Book. This matches the Ghostty font-family setting in this repo.

   After installing Determinate Nix, open a new terminal and confirm that Nix is available:

   nix --version

2. Clone this configuration.

   Clone the repo into the Home Manager config location:

   mkdir -p ~/.config
   git clone [email protected]:jimpudar/nix.git ~/.config/nix
   cd ~/.config/nix

   If GitHub SSH is not set up yet, clone with HTTPS instead:

   git clone https://github.com/jimpudar/nix.git ~/.config/nix
   cd ~/.config/nix

3. Bootstrap Home Manager.

   On the first run, use nix run because the home-manager command has not been installed into the user environment yet. Choose the profile for the macOS account you are setting up:

   nix run github:nix-community/home-manager/release-26.05 -- switch --flake ~/.config/nix#jmp

   Or for the work account:

   nix run github:nix-community/home-manager/release-26.05 -- switch --flake ~/.config/nix#work

   When this finishes, open a new terminal so the newly managed shell environment is loaded.

4. Verify the managed environment.

   home-manager generations
   which home-manager
   which nvim

5. Initialize LazyVim plugins.

   Neovim and the LazyVim starter configuration are installed by this Home Manager configuration. On the first launch, LazyVim will bootstrap lazy.nvim and plugins into Neovim's user data directory:

   nvim

   After the first launch finishes installing plugins, run :LazyHealth inside Neovim.

Ongoing usage

After the first successful switch, use the installed home-manager command.

Switch the personal account:

cd ~/.config/nix
home-manager switch --flake .#jmp

Switch the work account:

cd ~/.config/nix
home-manager switch --flake .#work

Update all flake inputs and switch:

cd ~/.config/nix
nix flake update
home-manager switch --flake .#jmp  # or .#work

Preview pending changes before switching:

cd ~/.config/nix
home-manager build --flake .#jmp  # or .#work

Layout

• flake.nix defines the jmp and work Home Manager outputs.
• modules/ contains shared configuration used by both accounts.
• nvim/ contains the shared LazyVim starter configuration.
• profiles/ contains account-specific packages, Git settings, paths, and zsh startup snippets.

Notes

• This flake is currently pinned to aarch64-darwin.
• Nixpkgs, Home Manager, and home.stateVersion are currently aligned on 26.05.
• Home Manager configures Ghostty, but it does not install the macOS application bundle here because programs.ghostty.package = null.
• Home Manager installs Neovim. Do not install Neovim manually on a fresh machine for this setup.
• Home Manager writes the LazyVim starter config under ~/.config/nvim. LazyVim plugins are installed by lazy.nvim on first Neovim launch.
• If an account already has unmanaged files under ~/.config/nvim, move them aside before switching to this Home Manager configuration.
• Rootcell shell integration assumes the project checkout exists at ~/projects/rootcell for jmp and ~/work/rootcell for work.
• The Home Manager profile is user-scoped; do not run home-manager switch with sudo.
• Run each profile from the macOS account it manages.
• If nix is unavailable immediately after installing Determinate Nix, open a new terminal window or restart the Mac.