Dotfiles

This repository contains my personal dotfiles, managed using GNU Stow.

This README is mostly because I forget things.

Features

• Terminal configurations (bash, ghostty, tmux)
• Zed editor settings (zed, only tracked files, not Zed state like prompts/)
• Git configuration
• Karabiner-Elements config and the U.S. Svenska keyboard layout (see below)
• Automated setup via install.sh

Installation

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/erikthorselius/dotfiles.git ~/dev/dotfiles
cd ~/dev/dotfiles

2. Run the installer

./install.sh

This installs the packages and applications in Brewfile, then symlinks the bash, git, ghostty, tmux, zed, and karabiner packages into $HOME using GNU Stow. Existing Karabiner configuration is moved to a timestamped backup before linking.

Use Homebrew Bash

The installer installs Bash but does not change the login shell. On a new Mac, add Homebrew Bash to /etc/shells once and select it:

brew_bash="$(brew --prefix)/bin/bash"
grep -qxF "$brew_bash" /etc/shells || echo "$brew_bash" | sudo tee -a /etc/shells
chsh -s "$brew_bash"

Open a new terminal afterwards and verify with echo "$BASH_VERSION".

Git identities

Git uses erik.thorselius@gmail.com by default. Repositories below ~/dev/tv4/ include ~/.gitconfig-tv4 and use the TV4 email address instead.

Swedish letters on a US keyboard

keyboard/layouts/U.S. Svenska.keylayout is U.S. plus å/ä/ö on keys an ANSI keyboard lacks (ISO §, JIS ¥ and JIS _). Karabiner (karabiner/) sends those keys for Caps/right ⌥ + [ ' ;, so apps get å/ä/ö without Option held. Apps that read ⌥ as Alt (Berth, WhatsApp, terminals) then type them fine. Caps/right ⌥ + i j k l are the arrow keys.

After ./install.sh, log out and in, then add U.S. Svenska under System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources and remove U.S.

To rebuild the layout, first select the standard U.S. input source. The dump tool refuses other source layouts to avoid accidentally producing a hybrid:

swift keyboard/tools/dump-layout.swift > us.json
python3 keyboard/tools/build-layout.py us.json "keyboard/layouts/U.S. Svenska.keylayout"

Local secrets

Anything machine-specific or sensitive (API tokens, work-only env vars) goes in ~/.bash_secrets. The file is sourced at the end of .bashrc if present and is intentionally not tracked by this repo.

# ~/.bash_secrets
export SOME_TOKEN=...