Preparing my vacation laptop - Jan van den Berg
Preparing my vacation laptop
7 July 2026
We're about to go on vacation. And I have decided not to take my newish Macbook Air M4. Just on the off-chance something might happen to my favorite piece of technology. And also: we'll be travelling a lot and staying in lots of different places and I do not want to use brain CPU cycles every day thinking about whether I should take my laptop with me or put it in the hotelsafe or leave it in the room etc.
So, the M4 is not coming with.
But I do need a laptop. I mean, who goes on vacation without a laptop?! I am not a caveman. And also: I am not going to be blogging from my phone.
I thought about pulling out the Chromebook again. Which makes sense: we travelled the US a few years ago, with only a Chromebook. Yes, it worked, but it was suboptimal. Specifically because I need things like PGP and a VPN for work.
Work?! Ah, yes, I see what you are thinking, but I am one of those people that likes to check in every now and then... Sorry.
My wife has a Macbook Air M1. Of course, the exact same thing that can happen to my M4 could happen to her M1. However this M1 is a few years old already, has been "battletested", with scratches and all that. At some point I even replaced the trackpad. We're a little bit less careful with this machine, I think? But: this laptop still runs perfectly. I even scanned for a secondhand one -- my wife's keyboard is ANSI, the horror -- but boy they are still pricey, so I guess I'll have to live with an ISO keyboard for a few weeks.
It was decided, I will use my wife's Macbook. Preparing this went as follows.
As I was writing this, I noticed this post is actually more like a how-to-prepare-a-new-laptop: vacation or otherwise. And even more so: specifically how to prepare a Macbook for my specific needs.
These are my public notes for that.
M4 vs. M1
Preparing the M1
Of course I need to have a dedicated user, so no browser profiles or alternative desktops and all that under my wife's useraccount. Just a dedicated user with its own dedicated environment and own login.
After that, I tweak MacOS on just a few specifics.
I use iCloud on my phone for a couple of things, it seems some specifics are not (never?) synced across laptops while other are?
Anyway, here is what I tweak:
Trackpad<br>I like my mouse to move a tad bit faster
Use tap as click with a very light touch
Screen: one pinch "larger" than the default
Tweak some Finder things: Show Pathbar specifically
I hide the dock
That's about it.
Next, I noticed my MacOS shortcuts weren't properly syncing via iCloud. A uncheck/check of iCloud sync fixed this. I have one (1) specific MacOS shortcut: right-click any image to create a perfectly-sized WordPress header image. I use this almost every day.
The software
Brave with extensions
I picked Brave as my browser and firstly installed two extensions that enable me to do 70% of my work.
Floccus<br>I imported my config from backup and tadaa all my bookmarks were synced. Great!
Bitwarden<br>For my passwords, of course
But also my SSH keys are stored here
I might later install: Imagus Reborn, Video Speed Controller, WhatFont, Better History. But for now Floccus and Bitwarden are essential.
Most likely Imagus Reborn will be installed very shortly. It's a must-have extension (but the new priviliges popup seemed scary, I need to look into this a bit more?).
Other Software
Ghostty<br>copied the config from backup: just 3 lines at this point
copied my .zshrc and .vimrc from backup
Thunderbird<br>Entered the credentials for the accounts, this was easier than exporting/importing profiles
Imported PGP keys from backup
Wireguard: VPN to home<br>copied the config from backup, super easy!
Sonicwall ConnectTunnel: VPN to work
Signal
Homebrew
Teams and Outlook (sadly)
Undecided
I haven't installed the following, for now:
Shottr: screenshots. Most likely I will install this shortly.
Rectangle: window management.
AltTab: I use this but it's not essential.
Stats
Conclusion
Overall this was actually all pretty straightforward. As stated before: Floccus and Bitwarden cover 70% of what I need. This means I can get a new -- or vacation laptop -- up and running in under an hour or less, which seems decent for something I will not be doing every week.
I try to use my laptop -- or any other computer -- as a pretty dumb terminal. Meaning: I try not to store any important files on there, those are on my NAS or elsewhere. So if the laptop does get stolen, lost or broken the damage will be hardware only.<br>Tech, MacOS, Ghostty, Floccus, Bitwarden, Macbook Air, M1, M4
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