Macos on Pink Noise

Quicktip: USGerman Keyboard Layout on macOS

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you use a Mac with a US keyboard but still write German regularly, the USGerman keyboard layout is a small quality-of-life fix. It keeps the normal US layout and adds German umlauts and ß behind the Option key, so you do not have to switch to a full German keyboard layout or use macOS’ long-press character picker.

After downloading and unzipping the layout, copy Roman.bundle into the system keyboard layouts folder:

Tailscale Setup Guide: Self-Hosted and UniFi Integration

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Tailscale is a modern VPN built on WireGuard with automatic mesh networking. For complete self-hosting, use Headscale—an open-source Tailscale control server implementation.

UniFi Devices: If you run UniFi hardware (Dream Machine, Dream Router, etc.), install Tailscale directly on your gateway:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8


# Install the latest version of Tailscale on UniFi OS 2.x+
curl -sSLq https://raw.github.com/SierraSoftworks/tailscale-udm/main/install.sh | sh

# Start Tailscale
tailscale up

# Advertise routes to your local network
tailscale up --advertise-routes=10.0.0.0/24 --advertise-exit-node

The installation automatically restarts after UniFi updates, runs via systemd on UniFi OS 2.x+, and supports Tailscale SSH. It works on UniFi Dream Machine, Dream Router, Cloud Key Gen 2, and similar devices.

AeroSpace: Fixing Homebrew PATH for GUI Apps on macOS

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When using AeroSpace (a tiling window manager for macOS), GUI applications don’t have Homebrew’s prefix in their PATH by default. This means Homebrew binaries like sketchybar or yabai won’t be found unless you specify the full path.

AeroSpace handles this automatically with a sensible default configuration. If you don’t override the [exec] section, it uses:

1
2
3
4


[exec]
 inherit-env-vars = true
[exec.env-vars]
 PATH = '/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/homebrew/sbin:${PATH}'

If you need custom environment variables, preserve the Homebrew PATH when overriding the [exec] section:

Nix Setup on macOS: An Overview

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A collection of resources for setting up Nix on macOS with nix-darwin and home-manager.

The nix-darwin-kickstarter repository is a good starting point for macOS.

Run programs without installing them with nix-shell -p cowsay.

Remote Deployment: nixos-rebuild announcement

Example configurations:

jdheyburn/nixos-configs
Great examples for:

Caddy web server
FreshRSS
deploy-rs
Tailscale integration
wimpysworld/nix-config - Production-ready configuration

Remote installation with nixos-anywhere: nixos-anywhere uses kexec. If kexec doesn’t work, boot with NixOS ISO instead.

Wireless in initrd: Unlocking encrypted drives over WiFi

Running Kanata on macOS with LaunchDaemon

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Kanata provides more readable keyboard remapping configurations than Karabiner-Elements. To run it automatically on macOS startup, set it up as a LaunchDaemon.

Install Kanata via Homebrew:

1

brew install kanata

Download and install the Karabiner VirtualHIDDevice driver. Kanata needs this to interact with macOS.

Create your Kanata configuration at ~/.config/kanata/config.kbd. See the documentation for examples. Add a key combo to reload your configuration (command: lrld) to avoid manually restarting.

Create two .plist files in /Library/LaunchDaemons/ to launch Kanata at startup.

Incorporating EDID into initrd Image on Linux

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Some monitors don’t properly report their capabilities (EDID - Extended Display Identification Data) to Linux systems during early boot, causing incorrect resolutions or no video output. You can fix this by incorporating custom EDID data into the initrd image.

First, extract the EDID from a working system. Install the required tools:

1

sudo apt install read-edid edid-decode

Extract and verify the EDID:

1
2


sudo get-edid > desktop_edid.bin
edid-decode desktop_edid.bin

Transfer the file to your target system and copy it to the firmware directory:

Configuring markdownlint-cli2 in LazyVim

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Using shell variables like $HOME in LazyVim’s nvim-lint configuration doesn’t work as expected—the string gets passed literally instead of being expanded. To use a custom markdownlint-cli2 config file with a machine-agnostic path, use Lua’s os.getenv() function:

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12


local HOME = os.getenv("HOME")
return {
 "mfussenegger/nvim-lint",
 optional = true,
 opts = {
 linters = {
 ["markdownlint-cli2"] = {
 args = { "--config", HOME .. "/.markdownlint-cli2.yaml", "--" },
 },
 },
 },
}

Create your ~/.markdownlint-cli2.yaml configuration file with your preferred rules: